Jack of all trades…

I get this question very often, and that is: which guidebooks do I use during my sabbatical in Japan? (I also get a lot of inquiries about the online resources, but I’ll talk about that in a future post).
I have so far used several books, but the main ones are:

Lonely Planet Japan (ed. October 2007)

Time [...]

I was about to publish a serious post on Hiroshima’s A-bomb dome and have a draft guide on Tokyo’s Tsukiji Fish market since the beginning of the month, but tonight’s dinner has changed my mood for good so I’ll post about it.
I arrived to Hiroshima today, after a short Shinkansen trip from Osaka. It was [...]

It has been long since I last had a good airport experience, apart from the shiatsu massage (I paid for) in JFK last January.
Airports in western countries have become hostile territory for travelers. I can understand strict rules and thorough controls due to a tense international situation (although I think they wouldn’t be too useful [...]

…nothing so far from reality!
I cannot claim to be an expert already in Tokyo’s metro, as I’ve been here for just a couple of days. But I remember some comments about how difficult it was to use. Maybe because I have used metro subways in more than a dozen countries (including Shanghai, Beijing, New York, [...]

This should be no surprise as we are in the rainy season. Tons of water have been poured in little time. I got soaked while wandering around Shibuya. People didn’t seem to care about the rain, I guess I’ll get used to it soon. As zen monks say: It’s raining. How wonderful!

Check out some other [...]

… sayonara Milan!
It was not easy though. First of all I had to leave my apartment. For this I decided to sell, throw and give away a lot of stuff and store the remaining things in a 3 m2 deposit.
The rest was rather simpler to program. An open ticket to Japan and a 2 night [...]

a great idea, with huge potential for hard-core travellers as myself (in particular now that I’m on a travel sabbatical)… hope to see it arround the world soon and with lots of other features!
Official site (in private beta): Offbeat Guides
I found this through Joi Ito’s blog

some of the suggestions (actually want-to-see features) I left on [...]