What's a good guide book?
 

I'll be in Osaka and surrounding cities. I'll also be in Tokyo and i was wondering if any of you could recommend a good guide book.

well, i used the Lonely Planet in Japan and i think its quite good. I can only recommend the Lonely Planet Japan.
I think there is a version for Tokyo only, might be worth a look as well!

I've got and used the Tokyo one, and it's really good. I would recommend it if you stay more then about 10 days or so.

Third vote for Lonely Planet guide. I have the Tokyo Encounters book and they published a Japan book as well as an Osaka book (I think). There cheap and quite in depth.

I've travelled a lot and Lonely Planet are about the best with Rough Guide coming up a very close second. Certainly I tend to get the Rough Guide if I can't get LP for some reason. Definitely for little city guides, Lonely Planet seems to have the edge, so you really can't go wrong with it.

Don't get too chained to the travel books through; there are some really delightful places hiding all over Japan that you'd only ever find by simply wandering about.

Lonely Planet sucks. It's the McDonald's of guide books but is written (or was15 years ago anyway) in a condescending, sometimes insulting, tone.

There IS the problem that everyone buys them and sticks to the same information, so you do have a point, but they seem to have new writers and update almost yearly, so I can't say i've ever found them condescending or insulting.

I found the LP guide to have some good maps but found the writting a little dry. I also had a Time Out Tokyo guide which I found more use for, subway map and other maps plus it would fit in a pants pocket and had photos of the places it talked about. Which was far more usefull then just an address.