Lonely Planet Tokyo Encounter

by Wendy Yanagihara

This travel guide to Tokyo enables short-stay travellers to make the most of their time. Information is provided on where to eat, sleep and shop and an itineraries chapter allows the traveller to plan... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1741048788
• ISBN13: 9781741048780
• Release Date: January 2009
• Publisher: Lonely Planet
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 0.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 4.0" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

Very helpful

I recently returned from an awesome week in Tokyo, and I'm a little baffled by the negative reviews of this book. It helped me make good choices of what to see and do in Tokyo. Of course this would not suffice as your only source of information, but without it for example I would have missed out on Kichijoji and Inokashira Park, which turned out to be one of the highlights of my visit. Another reviewer said it best: "What I also liked about the Lonely Planet guide was the author's mention of the avant-garde of Tokyo for those who want to see more than just Tokyo Disneyland." If you're just taking Gray Line bus tours this is not the book for you.

Japanese-level Efficiency

The sheer efficiency of the density of information in this book is its most memorable trait. It distills the conventional Lonely Planet guide for Tokyo into its most essential name, address, number, category format with the same usual glossy, pretty artwork and layout. The guide takes only the best and none of the chaffe, enabling you to have the most essential and best guidance on you in a portable format. The categorization and writing style are uniquely Lonely Planet. The artwork and sheer amount of information makes this guide worth buying versus summarizing and jotting down the same yourself from the larger Tokyo guide.

Excellent Resource

Tokyo can be really overwhelming because there are a million things to do! This book really helped with highlighting each area of Tokyo as well as providing hours and addresses of the places you want to visit. It also had fantastic suggestions for cheap eats. This author takes you into the back alleys (if you want to go - which you should!) or keeps you in the high class areas of Tokyo for a well rounded trip. I coupled this book with the Tokyo City Atlas book, which made it possible to understand the crazy mapping system of Tokyo. Have fun!

Costume fetish anyone?

Very good book. Useful info. I rediscovered Tokyo through this book. However, from the pictures you would think that the majority of young people in Tokyo were 'Coz-play-zoku', a small band of rebellious costumed youth found mainly in the Harajuku area of Tokyo. The author/photographer's fascination with these young people is obvious, but the editors definitely should have limited their exposure.

Better than Frommer's

I recently bought both this book and Frommer's most recent edition of its guide to Tokyo and my own conclusion is that the Lonely Planet guide is much better than its rival. Lonely Planet's is shorter, but the information presented within is much more useful--especially for my situation as a student with a place to stay and food being taken care of (though Lonely Planet does have information on hotels and restaurants for those who need to know). This guide has several things that Frommer's lacks... 1. a fairly complete section of street maps of downtown Tokyo that include all the subway lines. 2. cross-references within the book between sections on places of interest organized by geography and sections organized by topic. This enables one to look up on a museum, find its location, and then more readily look up other places of interest in the vicinity. 3. more walking tours. 4. correct romaji. I found it extremely annoying that Frommer's would be so careless as to make constant typos with important things such as place names. In one instance, the single-page reference to Tokyo's subway system--the generic schematic that can be had for free from the Tokyo govt--had "Yotsuya" station spelled as "Yetsuya," changing the pronunciation and potentially causing tourists to get lost. 5. More up-to-date. Even though both were printed at roughly the same time (both have 2004 as their year of publication), Lonely Planet has less information that is outdated. Again pointing to the subway reference in Frommer's, the page omits the new Shiodome station, currently a popular destination, even though the station opened back in 2002. What I also liked about the Lonely Planet guide was the author's mention of the avant-garde of Tokyo for those who want to see more than just Tokyo Disneyland. I wouldn't say the Frommer's guide was a waste; I'll probably take both when I go to Japan this year, but suffice to say I do not regret making this additional purchase.