On Japanese Travel Guides
To anyone considering visiting Japan, the inevitable first step is picking a travel guide. I know that’s a daunting task, given how many are out there, and how difficult it is to choose without knowing anything of the places you’re visiting. So, having gone through that process and lived through the consequences, I’d like to provide the best advice I can, which I think you’ll find is fairly simple and definitive.
As a rule of thumb, I always suggest purchasing two travel guides to get two perspectives, it’s not as hard as you might think to cross-reference them. Basically you pick one for whatever purpose (that’ll make sense shortly) and then double check with the other one in tough decision making circumstances.
First of all, it depends on who you are and why you’re going when determining what travel guide to purchase. If you are looking to travel in luxury and comfort, with the associated price tag, I suggest you purchase one of the travel guides I won’t discuss here, such as Fodor’s or Frommer’s, that is well established in evaluating luxurious accommodations with fairly little thought given to price. I would also purchase Lonely Planet to get a more accurate opinion of sites and locations than Fodor’s or Frommer’s is likely to give you.
For everyone else, Fodor’s and Frommer’s and, frankly, every other guide that I’ve seen out there except for Let’s Go, Lonely Planet, and Time Out, are worthlessly biased, poorly researched, and largely irrelevant to an enjoyable experience.
If you are traveling with a family of four for a couple weeks, get Lonely Planet, that’s all you need. Lonely planet by the way is not the best guide out there, personally I think Let’s Go and the Time Out City guides by far eclipse it, but if you are traveling with a family you are probably mostly interested in hitting the major sites and getting the most out of them, I think Lonely Planet is good for that, and will give you the most solid and affordable experience.
If you are traveling for most other reasons, whether it is alone for short or extended times, with friends, or any other reason I can think of (even business), get Let’s Go (LG) Japan and Lonely Planet Japan (LP). here is what you do with them:
Let’s go is by far superior for all practicalities: accommodations, transportation, shopping, entertainment, dining, long-term accommodations, jobs, and all other practical information. It’s opinions are honest and realistic, largely unidealized (you’ll find that misrepresentation can be a slight problem with Lonely Planet). Furthermore, it is excellent for an actual budget-conscious traveler, focusing on actually cheap locations and good deals at higher price ranges. All that said, its descriptions of sites can be randomly lacking, especially in major tourist cities like Tokyo and Kyoto, so it should be accompanied by another book. Furthermore, if budget is not an issue at all, LP provides more useful accommodation and nourishment information for those wishing for some style or expense, it’s a better middle ground.
Lonely Planet, as I mentioned, offsets LG nicely in that it provides much better maps and site descriptions, along with better orienting information in the maps (as useless as that is, see earlier post), although LG often provides crucial written landmarks that prove exceedingly useful (such as the KFC that led me like a savior to Kimi Ryokan upon my arrival).
LG and LP provide a great combination, and both will see fair use.
If you have any more questions about the guides or disagreements (or agreements) with what I’ve said, hit me up in the comments and I’ll try to respond.
