Guidebooks on Japan

I have a stack of Japan guidebooks that I have bought or aquired over the last decade. I’ve spent most of the last week preparing for my next trip up to the mainland so I felt I could give a few brief pointers about the differences in books available and which I would recommend. I’m only going to discuss the guidebooks I’ve actually used, but if you’ve read another I’d love to hear your comments. In a later blog I’ll give a list of useful Japan travel websites.

As a quick means of comparison I will mention the amount of information each book has on Matsuyama (one of the places I will be going).

Let’s start with the heavyweights.

Lonely Planet Japan (Pages on Matsuyama: 5 including 2 page city map)  The Rough Guide to Japan (Pages on Matsuyama: 12 including city map and Dogo onsen map.)

The problem I have with the Lonely Planet and the Rough Guide is their places to eat, and places to stay sections seem to be almost arbitrary. It is quite easy to waste a lot of time looking for the recommended option while wandering past numerous equally good restaurants / hostels / hotels. (Also with the rapid turnover of bars and restaurants in Japan, there is a good chance the place you are looking for is closed.) The best thing about the Lonely Planet and the Rough Guide is that you are far more likely to get an honest opinion about certain attractions e.g. Don’t visit …. because ……they have  zoo animals in tiny concrete pens / overpriced rubbish / tourist trap.  The photos in both books tend to be small and limited, and grouped together on separate pages. This lack of integration between text and images makes browsing less interesting but if you’re a  Joe Friday and all you want is the facts (ma’am) then the books have a huge amount of useful information. Of the two I prefer The Rough Guide.

On the other end of the spectrum is the National Geographic Traveler: Japan (3rd Edition) (Pages on Matsuyama 4 including 4 color photographs.) As is to be expected this book has great photography, and is very nicely laid out on the page. It would be a great book to buy when first considering where to travel in Japan. The amount of detail on some places (a single page for Kobe City) means that it would be less useful when traveling in Japan.

Japan Travel Pack (Globetrotter Travel Packs) is a compact pocket sized book I was given. It fits easily in your bag, but the information is limited and now out of date so give this one a miss. (1 page on Matsuyama)

Michelin Travel Guide Japan (Michelin Travel Guides) This was my most recent purchase, having been recommended it by Amazon based on my purchase history (Matsuyama 4 pages inc 2 small photos).  The first thing I checked when it arrived was the section on Okinawa where I read “The booming capital city of Naha is well on its way to becoming a modern metropolis, with its towering skyscrapers and state-of-the-art monorail.” If I was browsing in a bookshop I would have immediately put the book down and moved on.

The final two guidebooks, Japan (Eyewitness Travel Guides) (Matsuyama 1 page) and Insight Guides Japan (Matsuyama 1 page) are a cross between a standard guidebook and an illustrated encyclopedia. They both have a good mix of text, photographs, maps and illustrations. (Some of the images are out of date – e.g. the Tokyo Stock Exchange, but overall they integrate well with the text.) Of the two I prefer the Insight guide and this is not only due to the fact that the Insight guidebook includes four of my photographs.

Best backpacker guide: The Rough Guide to Japan

Best all-rounder: Insight Guides Japan