4 comments about Berlitz Japan Pocket Guide (Berlitz Pocket Guides).

1. This is probably the best guide around for the short-term (less than 2 weeks) traveller to Japan. The photos are excellent and the text is concise, informative and easy to read. It's full of helpful hints and is obviously written by a well-travelled writer who really knows his subject.

   Anyone going to Japan would be advised to take this little book. - amazing how much information is at your fingertips!




2. This is probably the best guide around for the short-term (less than 2 weeks) traveller to Japan. The photos are excellent and the text is concise, informative and easy to read. It's full of helpful hints and is obviously written by a well-travelled writer who really knows his subject.

   Anyone going to Japan would be advised to take this little book. - amazing how much information is at your fingertips!




3. The purely essential guide to Japan - Dennis Kessler does the fantastic job of illustrating the best way to be a tourist in Japan. Both the writing and the photography is superb, and hard to believe that it's just one man that performed both.

   I found it easy to read, with very understandable descriptions, and I was truly impressed by the beauty and quality of the photographs. This book is easily equal to the Rough Guide, if not more concise, being a pocket guide.




4. This guide is too small to do justice to the destination. There is only so much squeezing you can do before things start getting so superficial that they are rendered (almost) useless.

   What might work for Budapest or Norway is not necessarily good for Japan: the country is so distant, so bizarre, so DIFFERENT that a guide has to explore more than merely an unusual twist put on familiar things. You need space for that, and Berlitz hasn't got plenty of space with this pocket edition, which is not so cheap, thank you very much.

   One may wonder: if you are going so far, spending so long on a plane, spending so much money on your ticket - why would you try to save a few dollars on a guide? Or is it that you are SO concerned about the weight of your luggage? Well that suitcase WILL feel much heavier when you don't have a good map to guide you - and this book ain't got one.

   You will find that, because of the size of the book, everything is scaled down to the skeleton coverage - and it's the small helpful bits in other, larger, books that make your life easier. In this book, they sure try to have colorful pictures here and there (and a few are nice), but there is just not enough text. Not enough background reading. Not enough cultural information. Not enough practicalities. At the end, you realize - why bother buying anything at all? You'll get as much info from an in-flight magazine, which by the way may have some helpful maps.

   No offence to writers of the book, they tried their best and they have done beautifully in the severely constrained space that they had available to them. I can understand them, but this is not enough to justify the purchase of this book. Try Rough Guide instead - I'm not their best supporter and fan, but they've done a brilliant job on Japan. This is more than can be said about Berlitz publishers on this occasion.

No comments about Tokyo: The Changing Profile of an Urban Giant (World Cities Series).

No comments about Return to Tsugaru.

1 comments about The Old Sow in the Back Room: An Englishwoman in Japan.

1. Harriet Sergeant lived several years in Japan and gives in this book an account of her experiences in that country. It is an appalling picture: endemic corruption (even for the purchase of a house), racketeering, religion as business, the excessive importance of the group to which one belongs to. A merciless, brutal, egoistic and aggressive social environment: already at school children are badgered, resulting in several deaths per year.
   But the biggest victims in this overcrowded country are a Japanese minority group (the burakumin) and women.
   The burakumin should be compared to the pariahs in India. Because of their discrimination, many of them joined the yakuza (the powerful, also politically, Japanese gangsters) and are now feared.
   Women are totally subordinate to men. The comment of Amélie Nothomb in her book 'Fear and Trembling', where she says that she admires Japanese women because they don't commit suicide, are here completely confirmed.
   An eye-opening book.

1 comments about Discover Japan: Words, Customs and Concepts Vol. 1.

1. Still one of the best handbooks on "Words, Customs and Concepts" in Japan, originally published under the title A Hundred Things Japanese, Discover Japan Vol. 1 delivers well-written explanations by over 61 reknowned Japan scholars on topics ranging across the spectrum of Japanese life. B/W photographs or ink drawings (by Clifton Karhu) illustrate each item. The publisher, Kodansha, should not only reprint Discover Japan Vols. 1 & 2 again, but should continue the series with contributors from new leading scholars (and some of the same older ones who are thankfully still with us) and on new topics, including cell phones, convenience stores, game centers, and the ways technology has changed things in Japan in the last 20 years. My copy is from 1987.

No comments about Marco Zanta: The Space Between Photographs About Japan.

1 comments about All Japan: The Catalogue of Everything Japanese.

1. Liza Dalby's Catalogue of Everything Japanese reflects her extensive knowledge of the country. After living in Japan as a teenager and becoming the only non-Japanese woman to become a geisha, Dalby displays an extensive knowledge of all things Japanese in this amazing book.

1 comments about Tokyo Metropolitan Area Rail & Road Atlas.

1. I picked this up before my last trip to Japan to help me navigate some of the subways. This book has excellent maps and some very detailed close-ups of some of the most congested parts of the city. Large landmarks like banks, government offices, museums, parks and stations are all marked for easy identification. The book is large enough to provide better help than most travel guides, but still small enough to prove more useful than the large, folding maps. I highly recommend.

No comments about Culture Wise Japan: The Essential Guide to Culture, Customs & Business Etiquette.

No comments about Japanese architecture (Tourist library).