Tokyo Guide Books

As soon as I made up my mind to go to Tokyo, I knew I didn't want to sign up for a guided tour package or anything like that. I wanted to try and explore the city on my own. To prepare for my trip, I used the following 3 books:

Lonely Planet: Tokyo Encounter
Lonely Planet: Tokyo City Guide
Tokyo City Atlas: A Bilingual Guide

The first two Lonely Planet books are very similar. Tokyo Encounter is a smaller, almost pocket-like book that highlights the best that Tokyo has to offer. The book is organized by districts (Shinjuku, Shibuya, Ginza, etc.) and under each it lists the best sights, shops, food and drinks, etc. that you will find. Tokyo City Guide on the other hand is more detailed and thorough and has a longer list of things to see and do. It is organized in the opposite manner with the main chapters of the book being sights, shopping, food and drink, etc. with the subheadings being the different districts. Every place listed in both books come with a description and directions on how to get there (i.e. what subway station to get off at and where to exit from) as well as a section on excursions outside of Tokyo. Both books offer a bit of information on history, customs, warnings, dictionary, translations, maps and more. Both books have a co-author in common and therefore highlight many of the same things but I found differences in the descriptions. If I had to absolutely choose only 1 Lonely Planet book, I would get Tokyo City Guide because it is more thorough. Having said that, I am glad I bought both. In preparing my itinerary, I first consulted Tokyo Encounter to come up with a list of places to see and things to do. I would then use Tokyo City Guide to scrutinize those places even further to make a final determination if it was going to stay on my itinerary or not. I also used Tokyo City Guide to supplement my itinerary's main attractions with other sites in and around those areas. Both books come with maps which are adequate but if you are planning to explore Tokyo by subway and on foot, don't expect to use these maps and navigate with ease. They are ok but they are general and you are going to need more detail.

I found Tokyo City Atlas to be invaluable. I was pulling it out constantly on a daily basis. That's not to say that I was getting lost or would not have found my way without it. Despite all you hear about how crazy Tokyo is and how crazy the subways are, it's actually very tourist friendly with English signage mostly everywhere. Having said that, the Tokyo City Atlas gave me confidence in know exactly where I was at all times (well most of the time) and where I needed to go.

The subway system is actually really easy to follow even though it looks like a bowl of ramen noodles. Here is a map of the subway system which is identical to the pull out map you get with Tokyo Encounter.

Despite Tokyo City Atlas being the best overall map book by far, this pull out map from Tokyo Encounter was actually the best in displaying the subway system in a nice and easy to read manner. Despite there being something like 18 different subway lines, each station is intuitively labelled. For instance, all the stations on the Ginza line (Orange coloured line) start with the letter "G" and then each station on the line is given a number in order, so "G1", "G2", "G3", etc. The way you exit a station is very important also. Every station in Tokyo has multiple exits to leave from, which are given an alpha numeric label (e.g. A1, B13). For instance, I think Tokyo Station has over 20 exits to leave from. The distance between some of these exits can be quite long. As a result, you don't want to leave the station from any exit and then try and orient on the surface and look for your destination. The best thing to do is orient yourself underground in the station where there is a lot of signage and then leave by the appropriate exit closest to your destination on the surface. What's good about Tokyo City Atlas is it details every single exit for each of the stations. I used all 3 books in conjunction to the point where I knew exactly which line to take, what subway station to get off at, and which exit to leave from every time I took the subway. If you know these 3 things before hand when you take the subway, you're laughing.  There might be newer versions of the 3 books I mentioned so I would check that out first.

I would definitely review Tokyo Metro's Website which has a terrific walkthrough about using the subways and get familiar with their logo because that's what you are going to be looking out for when searching for subway stations. Despite all the different lines, the majority are operated by 2 companies. When you are not riding any of the Tokyo Metro lines, you will probably be riding on the JR Yamanote Line operated by JR East (which has a green "JR" logo so look out for that one also).