DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Tokyo

This travel guide is well organized and easy to locate exactly what you are seeking with a detailed table of contents and a thorough index section. The maps included are plastic laminated and easy to reference, and you can tell this guide was designed to travel along with you as it is very durably bound. Special flaps on both the back and the front covers function as place holders so you can reference more than one section while using it. It also has just enough descriptive information without being overly wordy and difficult to read on the fly. Plus, the recommendations for attractions, restaurants, lodging, and transportation were all spot-on with my experience and provided a lot of insight. I really benefitted from planning my trip using this guide! HOWEVER, if you are seeking information about Tokyo Disney Land you will not find any information about it in this guide (not that that is a significant detractor, but something to be aware of). It is, nonetheless, and excellent resource in negotiating the fantastic country of Japan.

I was looking for a guide just to Tokyo in addition to a general Japan book, since we would be spending most of our time their while in Japan. This one was great. I usually buy LP, and I did buy (and use) their huge Japan book for lots of things, but based on reviews I decided on Eyewitness for Tokyo. It was great. Good pictures, excellent maps (better than the LP maps for Tokyo), small enough to easily fit in my bag and easy to make with the flaps on the outside, the laminated street/subway map in the back was awesome. We did a few of the suggested walks and found them worthwhile. For things like hotel and restaurant reviews I tend to use the internet/tripadvisor to get the most up to date info (that stuff changes so quickly), but this book had enough places that it was a good jumping off point. We did eat at one recommended restaurant in Yanaka that was very good, as advertised ion the book. The Tokyo neighborhoods covered by Eyewitness overlap mostly but not completely with the LP book, so having both gave us a few more places to explore For in depth history and cultural information I read my LP Japan, which had more information, but this was the book I most often had in my purse as we were out and about. Highly recommended.

I love these books, the pictures and straight forward information about locations are great. They shove great details into concise simple text; unlike "Lonely Planet" which have to tell stories and provide often inaccurate descriptions. I used one of the "Lonely Planet" books for India, half time prices and times for access were wrong for most locations while DK was 100% accurate. The pictures and maps provided make it easy to find locations and get around when phones and google maps not available. Even if you don't use them for travel, make great coffee table books.

I say for the "short-stay" traveler because the DK Eyewitness books are an excellent resource for the American type 2-week or less vacation. This book--and all of the other 7 I own--get right to the point with the most recommended sites in foreign locales. These books are not in-depth, but offer just enough of a country's history, language, culture, religion, foods, climate, etc. that is most likely to interest you. Plus, they offer great photos that align with the descriptions. And after returning home, you'll most likely refer to it again while organizing your photos and video.

I had this book with me on my last trip to Tokyo and it was very helpful! I love the walking tours that they had in there - I elected to walk the path they had for Nishi Nippori and had a lovely time. I lost my place on the path a couple of times, mostly because I decided to explore and saw some wonderful things, talked to some very nice people, had an awesome lunch and just had a lovely day. Never would have tried that without this book and its recommendations. When I go back I'm taking this with me to either try that walk again or one or two of the others they had in there.

I own both this guide book and DK's shorter and smaller "Top 10 Tokyo." This is 208 pages, "Top 10" is 144. This is 8.6 x 5.1 x 0.8 inches, "Top 10" is 7.4 X 3.9 x 0.5 inches. This weighs 14.1 ounces, "Top 10" weighs 7.8 ounces. The surprising thing is that the "Top 10" version seems to have *more* information, and that information is MUCH better organized. Granted, there are longer entries in the larger, heavier version on some of the specific museums. But the smaller, lighter version seems to list more stuff overall and in terms of finding out about the best gardens to go do, the best museums to go to, etc., the "Top 10" version is simply much more useful. And it is smaller and lighter. So I recommend buying it instead. It's a great guide to Tokyo.

First time going to Tokyo. This book was super handy. The map of the city was useful for big land marks and was great that you could take it out of the book. The subway map was also really handy to be able to take out of the book and carry around. The extra info in the back about costs and wait times for things was also a big help.

I bought this guide to help me plan my trip to Japan. The guide is very good but quite frankly you can get away with only the DK Eyewitness Japan guide. Having said that, this guide helped me select which attractions I wanted to visit in Tokyo.