Tokyo City Atlas: A Bilingual Guide

If you want to get out and explore Tokyo, and want to see more than just a few blocks around the train stations, this book is an absolute necessity. It presents a level of detail that is simply unavailable in any other map book that I've seen in English, and is far, far more useful than any folding map. Tokyo is simply too large for folding maps and you need this level of detail.I've been to Tokyo more than a dozen times, and I always take this book -- it's become even more valuable as I've marked it up with locations of restaurants and stores and is now like my own personal guidebook. If you have this book and a  Rough Guide to Tokyo , you'll be extremely well-prepared to enjoy Tokyo.As other reviews note, Tokyo addresses use a system of successive specification: City, Area, Sub-area, Block, Building Number. This book gives you detail down to the level of every block in the city. Thus, if you have an address, you will be able to find the block and then walk around it to find the building number.And it's even more useful than that. In addition to block level maps, it has higher resolution maps for most of the key areas (Shinjuku, Akasaka, Omotesando, Ginza, etc) with many buildings labeled -- and even numbered Metro exits! Thus, you can tell in advance that to get to such-and-such building, you will want to take a particular exit from the Metro. There is also minor coverage of some non-Tokyo areas that you might find useful, such as Minato Mirai in Yokohama and the area around Yokosuka base.It has great maps just inside the cover of the Subway (Metro and Toei) and JR Systems. In fact, the JR map is so good and complete but readable that a Japanese colleague of mine commented on it and used it to find something. The combined map of Subway plus inner JR lines is brilliant and superbly useful to get around the city much faster than simply relying on Metro (hint: figure out how to ride the Yamanote and Chuo lines!)The only drawback is that its coverage requires it to be larger than will fit in most pockets. It fits well in a purse or backpack, but not in most pants pockets. I think it's worth carrying a small bag just to take this guide along. And when you're not out and about (or in Tokyo) it is delightful simply to browse and marvel at the city.

Here is what I’ve been able to reconstruct about the publishing history of the current edition of the Tokyo City Atlas.If anything I say in this review is incorrect please let me know and I will correct it or delete the review. But if I’m right, a lot of people could be very seriously led astray by a Tokyo street atlas that bears the date 2012 but was in fact published in 2004. This could be a serious problem for people attending the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.In 1993 Kodansha first published its Tokyo Metropolitan Area Rail & Road Atlas. It is beautifully produced but was fairly criticized by users because it did not contain complete coverage of Tokyo’s streets but rather a selection of street maps of important parts of the city. If you wandered off the grid you were out of luck.A second edition of this atlas was published in 1998 with more complete coverage of the city. A third edition appeared in 2004. This is the Tokyo Street Atlas currently in print and being sold as the latest edition, which it is. Unfortunately, if I am correct anyone using this atlas will be at the mercy of a depiction of Tokyo that is 15 years old as of 2019.The reason this atlas bears the publication date of 2012 is because, as stated on the copyright page, that is when it was first published by Kodansha USA. The precise wording on the copyright page is: 3rd edition 2004 by Kodansha International, First edition 2012 by Kodansha USA. But unless I’m mistaken, the date of 2012 has no meaning. This is simply a reprint of the 2004 edition.If I am correct, this is a matter of no small moment. The Summer Olympics will be held in Tokyo next year - 2020 - and people using the edition dated 2012 could find themselves led astray given the changes in Tokyo streets and public transit lines in the 16 years between 2004 and 2020.My hope is that Kodansha has a new edition in the works precisely in order to assist the thousands of people who will be in Tokyo for the 2020 Olympics. But who knows?As I mentioned at the beginning of this review, if I am mistaken in any respect I hope someone will let me know and I will either correct it or delete it.

This city atlas was remarkably useful during a recent visit to Tokyo. The detailed maps of the wards show locations of train stations as well as subway stations, including the various station exits, which was especially useful in determining which direction to go in leaving the stations. There is also a nice map of both the rail and subway lines around the city, showing all of the stops. Also, unlike many of the area maps posted near the train stations, the orientation of the maps on every page of the book show the top as being north, making it a little easier to navigate. Addresses are sometimes difficult to locate within the city. This atlas provides building names as well as locations of some major stores, which together can be used to find almost any destination. I can honestly say that without this guide, I would have gotten lost multiple times. During one of my many rides on the trains, one of the locals asked to take a look at my book while I was flipping through some pages. They commented that this could be useful for Japanese visiting Tokyo (in addition to foreigners) as well since it is bilingual and very well organized.

Now you can just use walking GPS. It wasn't too long ago that this was the BOMB. The SH&T. I've been going to Japan for 12 years and lived there in 2007. If you want the challenge to find things using a bilingual book, this is it. None better, and believe me I've looked. It's a very complex system of addresses and you'll need all the help you can get. Get this book! If not here, there is only one place in Tokyo that I know of and it's very hard to find. Kinakunya's in Shinjinku (spelling subject to error).

Tokyo is presented on two scales. The smaller scale maps are sensibly laid out in a grid pattern; they are well drawn, but difficult to read without optical aid. The more popular areas are presented on a larger scale; again the maps are excellent cartographically, but the pages are not contiguous, so that a journey such as I made from Akasaka to Shinagawa involves jumping between scales, and even more confusingly, between pages arbitrarily ordered. Nevertheless, navigation through Tokyo would have been much more difficult without this atlas.I bought my copy from Amazon second-hand, and so perhaps should not complain that the previous owner had drawn notes on seeral of the pages; this is something, however, which I would never do.

Bought to replace an earlier copy that fell apart after years of use, this is the one essential piece of kit for your Tokyo Olympics packing. Since Japanese street numbering systems are so arcane as to baffle even locals, this book will pay for itself over and over again. It makes walking in Tokyo easy and fun.

I was looking for a weather-proof, foldable map, but I guess smartphone apps have put paid to most of them.This has good detail and is in a easy to carry form/size.

I visited Tokyo for 10 days and used this atlas all the time - really good idea to have it if you plan to do lots of strolling around.

Like Kodansha's "Japan - A Bilingual Atlas" this is slightly quirky to follow, but the best I've found. We will be taking it on our next trip to Tokyo.