Getting Around: Tokyo

As frequent readers know, I went to Tokyo recently. Being completely unfamiliar with Tokyo and Japan as a whole I decided to check out a couple of guidebooks on the town. I checked out the usual big names for guidebooks: Rough Guide, Time Out, Fodors, Lonely Planet as well as a handful of others. In the end I settled on Time Out: Tokyo, Rough Guide Tokyo and a new guide that comes out later this month: Lonely Planet Tokyo Encounter. After less then a day in the city I closed Rough Guide Tokyo and ended up returning it which left me with Time Out: Tokyo and Lonely Planet Tokyo Encounter.

Now, before I say anything about either guidebook let me talk about Tokyo as a city: It is huge, it has no street names and only a couple of real tourist sites or identifiable landmarks. With (at my count) at least 4 different sets of trains (including the subway and monorail) owned by the government and various private companies it is not exactly the easiest city to get around.

Though coming from a city with a pretty complete and, supposedly, confusing subway system, I found navigating the Tokyo subways not nearly as difficult as you would think. Finding things on the street was a different story.

I was excited to find that LP-Tokyo Encounters had a pull-out map and smaller maps on each page dedicated to the specific neighborhoods. Of course, my feelings on this completely changed after I got there and tried to use the maps. There are so many streets in Tokyo that a map only serves as a general guide to some of the larger ones. Deciphering which street is which can be pretty difficult. The larger map may have been helpful for driving around, but for walking the streets it is pretty useless.

The maps in the book are only slightly better and can be used as a general reference but can also be a bit confusing. In comparing the two books, LP Tokyo Encounter had better neighborhood maps then Time Out: Tokyo. Though the book was smaller, the maps covered a greater area and laid out where landmarks were slightly better. As a general overall guide I liked what I saw in “Lonely Planet: Tokyo Encounter” slightly better.

Unfortunately, when it came to the actual use of the books, I found myself turning to “Time Out: Tokyo” more then LP Tokyo Encounter. LP Tokyo Encounter is suppose to be an insider’s guide to Tokyo, and essentially it was. The problem was that the insider doing the writing had different tastes than I do.

I’d find myself reading an entry and asking “Why would I want to go see that?” or, I would find something great in Time Out: Tokyo and when I would look it up to cross reference the entry with LP Tokyo Encounter and found that it wasn’t mentioned at all. For instance, Doughnut Plant: a NY doughnut shop that has set up some out posts in Tokyo and have made some flavors out of local ingredients and tastes. It’s not even mentioned in LP Tokyo Encounter. TO: Tokyo gave directions from the closest museum. Then again, the map of the area from TO: Tokyo didn’t extend to where the shop actually was. For that we needed LP Tokyo Encounter.

It was great that LP Tokyo Encounter had a bunch of restaurants listed in it that sounded more interesting then some of the ones from TO: Tokyo. Unfortunately finding any of these was nearly impossible with the maps and lack of any information on the streets themselves. Though there is talk in the book about getting around using coordinates, but this system is never fully explained.

The pullout subway map from LP Tokyo Encounter was extremely useful (and would have been more useful if there was a full pullout map of Tokyo instead of just Central Tokyo with other neighborhoods on the back). It really made navigating the subways much easier, though some stations that appear to be connected where closer to 3 blocks away from each other (though that is a problem with the Tokyo subway map, not the guidebooks).

When it came to shopping, LP Tokyo Encounter was, pretty much, our go-to book. Every store it recommended, once we were able to actually find it, was pretty much just as it was described, and sometimes better, though a bunch of them seem to be stores geared towards women or that only sold women’s clothing. Also, and this has to do with where my tastes differed from those of Wendy Yanagihara’s (the author of LP Tkyo: Encounters), some stores that I loved and thought were really neat (like Loft in the Shibuya district: 7 floors of awesome housewares essentially) didn’t make the cut, but appeared in TO: Tokyo.

The listing for the Ueno Zoo also seemed a bit off. There is an offhand comment about its popularity due to the pandas. Well, there is only one Giant Panda there (Ling Ling) and a bunch of red pandas (we’ve even got those at the Central Park Zoo). What was more impressive was the variety of animals (though the condition of their habitats was a little depressing). Though not as full as the Bronx Zoo, you will get to see a couple of animals that didn’t make the cut in the Bronx (like a kangaroo, though they do have red tree kangaroos in the Bronx, but those just aren’t the same).

When it comes down to it, I was happy to have Lonely Planet Tokyo Encounter on hand and would recommend taking it with you if you are going to Tokyo, especially if you are going for a long period of time. It seems like the type of book that would be excellent for someone who got a chance to fully understand the complexity of the Tokyo streets, giving an insiders perspective for new transplants to Tokyo. Its maps and small size also make it convenient to take around the city in your back pocket or in your bag without taking up too much room. If you are only going to be in Tokyo for a week, I’d recommend doing what I did and checking out a few guidebooks. Find one you feel has similar taste to what you like and are interested in and keep Lonely Planet Tokyo Encounter on hand as a great book to use as a cross reference.