Below is a list of the books I have about Japan. If you see a trend, I don't want to know about it ;-) Some books don't have comments because I did not read them thoroughly (or I had no time to write a comment yet).
| Amazon Link | Score (/10) | Comments |
| 8
| A must have book, with lots of tips and information. A bit heavy, though. I would have liked some sort of Internet-license to print the pages of interest for a specific trip, because I can't carry this beast when I lug my photo gear around. (note that I have the previous edition. There seems to be one edition per year...) |
| 8
| Good book with quite a few interesting hiking trips in Japan. I would have liked a bit more: these is only 10 in the Kansai. Among those, only a few are really in the wild and suitable for a single day trip. One book for two-three hikes is a bit too expensive. But if I stay longer in Japan this book will become very usefull... |
| 7
| A few pictures, a few recipes and a lot of things to know about japanese food. Maybe more recipes would have been better, but other books are there for that purpose. |
| 9
| Great toolbox when visiting Japanese restaurants. A Japanese girl even asked me where to buy it! The book is split in several sections, one for each type of food (tempura, sushi, soba, yakitori,...) which leaves only a few pages to browse at a given restaurant: fast and easy! This guy should publish a guide of restaurants too... |
| 8
| Interesting things to do in Tokyo if you don't want to spend your time in museums and camera shops. Definitely a must if you plan to go to Tokyo for some time. Too bad there is no 'forbidden'-style urban exploration... |
| 9
| Great book about ryokans. A few gems to be explored, but be warned that the price of a good ryokan starts at 15000Y/night with two meals. Not cheap, but worth it! |
| 6
| Interesting comments about Japanese language and habits. A good reading for someone who will do a buisness trip there. Lots of little stories to illustrate the points. However, the books is a bit shallow and should have dug deeper. |
| 8
| An interesting phrase book with only one purpose: dating! :-) |
| 7
| This is just a bloody dictionary! BUT it's in romanji, which means it's readable (as opposed to Kanji-based dictionaries)). Its major drawback is that several works are proposed for the translation of an entry, but without any indication on what the differences between these translations are... I guess it would take about twice the same thickness to cover that issue so it's not a big deal for such a pocket dictionary |
| 7
| Same as above... |
| 8
| Let's learn Kanji kids! A school book for kids around 6-7 years old. The cover says ''every day's homework'', but I still have to start working on it seriously. The problem is that everything is in japanese, including the instructions so that I don't always understand what's the purpose of an exercise... |
| 7
| At least it's a book for French speakers to learn Japanese. A bit sad they start to introduce verbs at lesson 24 (/40). A would also introduce the '-na' adjectives after the normal adjectives to avoid confusion. At last there are a lot of mistakes/typos. Strange for a second edition... |
| 7
| Interessant set de quelques nouvelles (vaguement) liees au tremblement de terre de Kobe (1995). L'atmosphere est bien rendue et les nouvelles sont en general originales. |
| 8
| Une histoire poetique tres bien ecrite mais qui se termine un peu en queue de poisson. J'aurais aime un chapitre en plus... |
| 5
| Don't get it if you already have the Lonely Planet or the Rough Guide. Most information is in already there. Regular advertising in a book of this price is not acceptable: we already have plenty of banners on the Internet!! |
| 9
| Beautiful balck and white pictures of Gunkanjima (also known as Ashima). |
| 7
| Nice pictures, but almost no text (then again, I would'nt be able to read it anyway). Localisations are missing, which is a pitty if one wish to go to one of these places. |
| 6
| Urban exploration, but describing places that are sometimes completely worthless. Pictures are snapshots rather than photographs. A very different style than the book by Kobayashi above. |
| 6
| Second volume of the book above. Same thing, cont'd. |
| 6
| A lot of places, a little more concentrated in the Kanto (Tokyo) area. Photography is not very artistic and sometimes not even good at all. However, this is not the purpose of the book which is rather to show and locate places as well as to indicate a few hints on how to get there,... (I suppose, since I can't read it anyway ;-) ) Unfortunately, a lot of places described here are squats or old houses without any interest. Looking for better places would have deserved a higher score. |
| 9
| Photos of Gunkanjima before it was closed. A wonderful parallel to the black and white picture book above. |
| ?
| I have no f...ing idea what this is. I was expecting a picture book but it's only text so I don't understand a single thing. Given the format I should have known it... The kanji mean big, entire, abandon and ruins. |
| 6
| More ruins, not particularly great. |
| 8
| Another set of great pictures from Kobayashi. |
| 4
| I was expecting something with lot's of pictures of different sites but it turns out to be mostly pictures of the same sewage or drain. Not very interesting, and for the price I'd even say it's close to a ripoff. |
| 9
| Rien de tel qu'un bon bouquin d'injures originales pour se mettre en forme (et se rappeler son enfance!) Bien foutu, bonnes annecdotes. Parfois on aimerait en savoir un peu plus sur l'une ou l'autre chose mais bon, ca ferait une brique de 1000 pages... ^_^ |
| 8
| Une bonne methode pour apprendre le japonais. C'est celle qu'on utilise actuellement au cours, et elle est mieux que le livre Pocket ci-dessus. Premier volume, j'acheterai le deuxieme quand on y sera... Point positif: le bouquin est entierement en japonais. Pour les explications, traductions et companie il y a un autre livre separe qui existe dans plusieurs langues: anglais, allemand, thai, phillipin, espagnol, portugais,... |
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| 8
| Traduction et explication grammaticales du livre ci-dessus. Indispensable, meme si je n'ai eu connaissance du bouquin qu'apres 5 mois: un prof c'est bien, mais un avec bouquin c'est nettement mieux! |
