2 comments about Wallpaper City Guide: Tokyo (Wallpaper City Guide Tokyo).

1. The Wallpaper City Guides (WCG) are not comprehensive, and there is a bit of an 'extended travel magazine article' aspect to them: however, I like WCG's differences from Luxe City Guides, the travelogues in closest competition with WCG. Luxe engages in snarky comments, and its prose (rather like a slick, smug club kid writing for middle-aged wannabee hipsters with bottomless pockets) is of a sort that I've always found grating. I tossed my Luxe Tokyo guide for this very reason.
   
   The WCG style is meant to whet your appetite and give you some ideas about what to see if you have but a few days to check Tokyo out. I like its brevity.
   
   The WCG gives hotel and restaurant options both expensive and reasonable, making it worthwhile for the traveller on a more modest budget, whereas Luxe covers only the most expensive places to stay, eat, etc. WCG assumes you have very good taste, and lets you decide whether or not that entails 'blowing the bank' (I made a reservation for a Tokyo ryokan based on WCG Tokyo's recommendation, as it combined style with thrift): Luxe assumes you'll be paying the $700 Mandarin Oriental or Grand Hyatt rate, and that nightclubbing and shopping is all you're interested in. WCG has attractive photos and great layout that's easy to read: Luxe has no pictures and a tiny, crammed-to-the-rafters typeface. WCG has a servicable fold-out map of the Tokyo subway system inside its back cover: Luxe has a list of taxi, limo and private car-hire companies.
   
   The list could go on forever, but suffice it to say I like the Wallpaper City Guide Tokyo's style.



2. I live in Tokyo and a friend of mine who recently visited brought this as her only guide book. As a stand alone guidebook, she would have been completely and totally lost without me, my Tokyo City Atlas, and my explicit step by step instructions on how to get to places without me. If you're traveling on your own or without a friend here to play guide, this book is not enough - it doesn't give you webaddresses, metro/train station stops, or the names of certain places written in Japanese so you can ask people for help.
   
   Having said all that, as a complementary guide, this book was FANTASTIC. Every place that we went to in the book looked as good as they were pictured. Every food recommendation was truly amazing and never a waste of time. Although it does have recommendations for all around the city, I would say that it is pretty Omotesando/Minami-Aoyama centric.
   
   I am planning to buy the new edition coming out next year for myself. This is a great book for anyone who lives in Tokyo and wants to find restaurants, museums, and temples that are perhaps off the beaten path, but on the modern architecture and interior settings path. This book generally makes no recommendations that you would see in the typical guide book (e.g. Asakusa, Shinjuku Tochomae, Kamakura day-trip), but that's fine, because if you're coming here by yourself, you will need a Lonely Planet or Frommer's anyway and those books will provide you with more comprehensive travel info.
   
   Particular food faves in this edition: a great, Kyoto-style food izakaya across from Aoyama Gakuin, and Beige, Alain Ducasse's restaurant in the Chanel bldg in Ginza (you can get an amazing lunch set there starting at 6000 yen - a great combo of top-rate French food with impeccable Japanese service, something you can't experience in France. Definitely worth the splurge.).

No comments about Zagat Shanghai Restaurants & Hotels: Pocket Guide (Zagat Survey: Shanghai Restaurants) (Zagat Survey: Shanghai Restaurants).

5 comments about Arousing the Goddess: Sex and Love in the Buddhist Ruins of India.

1. Wow, what a great novel! It is insightful and skillfully weaves together a spiritual journey through India with an unplanned, but welcomed love story. Arousing the Goddess is an easy-to-read novel which holds the reader's attention from the first to the last page. Tim is very open about his experiences, but he is also able to interject the right amount of humor and wit into the storyline.

   As Tim and Sabina's relationship evolves, the reader is constantly left wondering what will happen next as they journey together. What makes this a great novel is that as the story unfolds, the reader can't help but get caught up in the different emotions (passion, frustration, disappointment, heartbreak) that Tim and Sabina experience both individually and as a couple. Additionally, the reader can relate to the different levels of their relationship and can share in their pain and joy. Tim is able to engage the reader throughout his story even to the end where he leaves the reader with a thought provoking question.




2. Arousing the Goddess: Sex and Love in the Buddhist Ruins of India is the personal memoir of one man's sexual and spiritual awakening in India. Author Tim Ward traveled throughout India and the far east for two years, and fell in love with a beautiful Austrian Indologist on her own search for knowledge. The energy harnessed the power of tantric sex to achieve a sublime plateau of bliss, color, sensation, and awakened truths amid their passion. Their journey is one that pursues enlightenment as well as spiritual wisdom, and the heat of their unions recalls echoes of the ancient sex practices of the mysterious Tantrics. An enthralling true story of physical, carnal, and spiritual exploration as witnessed, lived, and recorded by Tim Ward.



3. A mystical philosopher engaged upon an autobiographical journey into the East, "searching for the inexplicable, something to crack open [his] metaphysical prejudices." Arousing the Goddess introduces us to a true traveler, an intrepid spiritual pilgrim looking for that elusive point wherein the hand of heaven touches earth. Yet in the early naïveté of the journey, the sexual and the spiritual get fused and confused under the banner of Tantric allure. Though even in this, the author is honest, perhaps too honest. For painfully prolific are the pages sticky with the seedy recollections of one seeking to uncover the metaphysical nature of sex. All the while, this novice exploration into the ruins of Tantric lore proves something of a bust. And thus the spiritual journey must continue, as this bona fide pilgrim yearns for a greater glimpse into the mysteries of reality. And as such, he challenges each of us to overcome our confusions and our delusions and travel onwards into What the Buddha Never Taught.



4. This is a fun read...Sabrina is a "tireless" Goddess
   
   Sudden Warm Shower
   opening
   entirely
   
   [...]



5. Would highly recommend this book to all those interested in travel and sex. For it provides a wonderful account of travelling through India and then goes very deeply into the experience of falling in love, and making love. I have studied the anthropology of sexuality at Cambridge University and the University of Hawaii, and this book deserves to be on every syllabus - I believe it is already on the syllabus of Claremont University in California. Even that doesn't justify this book for it also a deeply spiritual study of one young man's quest for meaning when he studies Buddhism. Not only that but is an easy to read account, that is absolutely gripping - and Tim's emotional honesty is breathtaking. I quoted extensively from on my book on travelling with your intuition Travelling Magically: How to Turn Your Journey into a Life-Changing Experience I read an enormous amount of travel books for it and quoted from some. But this book - I originally found from an amazon list - is way up there with the very best. Really, I wish I had come across it years ago. I can't recommend it more highly.

No comments about Nepal (Periplus Travel Maps : Nepal Country Map) (Other Regional Maps).

1 comments about Eyewitness Travel Guide to Delhi, Agra and Jaipur.

1. Being from India and having lived for many years in Delhi, I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who plans to travel to Delhi, Agra and Jaipur.
   
   The book presents very interesting information on a variety of important 'background' topics that can enrich visitors' experience of their visit to these cities. Knowing something about the history of the region, the religions, architectural styles, music, dance, styles of jewelry etc. can help appreciate the context for the sights, monuments, artefacts, customs and cultures that you will encounter. The text and explanations are lively and well written.
   
   The illustrations and the photographs are the best part of the book. Having wandered the streets of Chandni Chowk and spent many many hours enjoying the treasures of the National Museum in Delhi, the text and pictures in the book transported me back to the place that I remember so well.
   
   I've travelled to Agra and Jaipur many times on work and I wish I had had the benefit of a guide like this to help me enjoy the sights more richly. I am travelling back there with my family later this year and this is a book that you can be sure I will have in my pack!

2 comments about Japan and Her People.

1. Japan and Her People, Anna Hartshorne's 1902 book on her experiences in Japan (along with its history), is an entertaining and informative volume that will be an excellent addition to any historian's library (with the added benefit of being a lively read).
   Hartshorne, the daughter of a Quaker missionary, was a longtime resident of Japan, spending many years as a teacher in schools such as the Joshi Eigaku Juku. As such, she came over time to develop an appreciation and understanding of Japanese culture that gives her book an insight lacking in similar books written by short-term visitors. It would be unfair to label the book a travel journal, guide, or history-it's all of these and more.
   The book begins with chapters on traveling to Japan ("...not a formidable matter...ranging from twelve days to three weeks") and a description of the Yokohama area, which at the time was the area most frequented by foreigners. The next two chapters feature an excellent introduction to Japanese history. Hartshorne relates the history of Japan from its earliest legends in the Kojiki and Nihongi through the Bakumatsu and Meiji Restoration. Touched upon along the way are the Minamoto, Taira, Go-Daigo, Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Tokugawa Ieyasu, and many more figures of note. At times the history proves to be false (as in the story of Tokugawa Ieyasu dying of wounds suffered at the Summer Battle of Osaka, or the many legends surrounding the 47 Ronin that were for years accepted as fact and since disproved). This in itself is helpful, however, for showing what the accepted views were at this particular point in time. Cities such as Tokyo and Kamakura are examined as well as overviews of several regions (including Oshu, Hokkaido, and the west coast). There are chapters on Japanese households, the tombs of the Tokugawa, Buddhist temples, hot springs, Japanese inns, and more. In each of these chapters Hartshorne generally gives a description of the subject as it was in her day and then examines its history. For example, the story of Will Adams (the so-called `English Samurai') is brought up in the Yokohama chapter and Hosokawa Gracia is examined in conjunction with Confucianism during the Japanese Household chapter. Hartshorne tends to stray off topic, but as she brings up one interesting story after another, the effect is generally quite engaging. Legends and folklore merge with observations and fact, giving the reader a feeling of how it must have been to live in and experience Japan in the early twentieth century. Many of the book's best passages come when Hartshorne expresses her dismay with certain elements of Japanese history and culture. The interior of the Kamakura Buddha is said to be "disenchanting" with "a sort of unnecessary ugliness that one resents", while she finds Gompachi (of the famous legend of lovers Gompachi and Komurasaki) to be "as cowardly a young cut-throat as ever got his deserts".
   Despite her affiliations with Christian missionaries, Hartshorne is quite respectful regarding Buddhism and Shinto. She also brings to life the setbacks of Buddhism during the Meiji Restoration (as Shinto became the favored `religion' of the new regime).
   Even the natural and man-made disasters that routinely swept Japan are reflected. In a post scripted note, Hartshorne relates how a fire burned down many of Ikegami temple's structures after she had visited and wrote at length about it.
   Interspaced throughout the text are black and white period photos, enhancing the book's descriptions and helping to capture the unique feel of Japan at a time when it was still moving away from traditional values and lifestyles towards the modernity of the West.
   An added bonus in this edition of the book is a Forward by Lian Hearn, author of the best selling Tales of The Otori series. Hearn is well-steeped in the history of Japan and provides valuable background and historical perspective to Hartshorne. In particular, I found Hartshorne's possible influence on Nitobe Inazo, author of the 1900 Bushido:The Soul of Japan (a book instrumental in shaping early Western misconceptions of Japanese culture and history), quite interesting. Hearn's Forward reads more like an historical analysis than the traditional congratulatory forward. The editors have also cleaned up spelling errors from the original 1902 edition. The only possible drawback to the book is the lack of an index; it's understandable since it's not a straight out history.
   As Hearn laments, "It's sad that Anna wrote no other books". Thankfully, we once again have this one to enjoy.



2. Massey and West deserves five stars for their loving presentation of this early twentieth century travelogue, which should be of great interest to historians and serious Japanese culture buffs.

No comments about Korea: As Seen by Magnum Photographers.

No comments about Groovy MAP 'N' GUIDE MANILA.

No comments about A Season in Red: My Great Leap Forward into the New China.

2 comments about Lonely Planet Thailand's Islands & Beaches.

1. Despite all SE Asia - tsunami affected guides - say: "you can update online" you don't get lot of information on their website.
   Practically half of the areas detailed by this book is affected by the tsunami. The information is good, but not certain due to all the problems in the area. I've been in the andaman beaches and the guide was usefull, but I would wait for next version of this book. Lonely Planet Thailand (the next version, tsunami updated) is ready in august 2005, I think. So it's worth waiting...



2. I started reading Loney Planet years ago when I planned my trip to Thailand and have never been disappointed. I am an author and my memoir, soon to be released, takes place in Thailand in 1993. The beauty then and now has not changed in the outer islands. I would recommend anyone visiting Thailand to read this book first to get a feel of the country and its wonderful people.
   Dodie Cross, Author of A Broad Abroad in Thailand: An Expat's Misadventures in The Land of Smiles.