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Aftersleep Books
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JapanThe following report compares books using the SERCount Rating (base on the result count from the search engine). |
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Aftersleep Books - 2005-06-20 07:00:00 | © Copyright 2004 - www.aftersleep.com () | sitemap | top |
Their main force is that you don't have to imagine whether a destination would be something for you - the guide shows you what to expect, where others just tell you about it. That is the series' main force: They are very easily digestible.
That said, an Eyewitness Guide can't stand alone - especially not one about such a complex place to visit (for westeners) as Japan. My wife usually acquires a Lonely Planet guide for the place, and I read the Eyewitness Guide, and the two complement each other nicely.
The Eyewitness Guide doesn't contain enough detail to really enable you to find your way around - for instance, not all sights are listed with opening hours, and entrance fees are never mentioned. With the high prices in Japan and excentric opening hours, these are very relevant pieces of information. You don't want to travel for an hour in an overcrowded train
just to find that the site is closed!
The maps in this book are pretty good, but could be better. Finding your way around in a Japanese city is difficult even for the Japanese, and the Japanese and maps don't really go together that well. For this reason, faulty maps are not what you really need - here, it turned out, the maps in the Lonely Planet guide were more precise.
On the other hand, the book has an excellent phrase book - a lot of useful phrases, including "I'd like to make a reservation" and "How do you eat this", makes the book very useful, and we brought it everywhere (even for dinners) for that reason. Here, it vastly surpassed the Lonely Planet guide, and as the Japanese typically don't understand English at all, it's almost indispensable!
Being a fan of the Eyewitness Guides, I was at first slightly disappointed by this book compared to the ones about NYC and Paris, but I grew to like it more and more with actual use. Still, it can't stand alone, and that is its main disadvantage.