Kyoto: The Greatest Travel Tips

This new guidebook from JTB publishing has two distinctive features which may just put it at the top of your shopping list if you’re living in Japan.

Kyoto: The Greatest Travel Tips is a well designed new guidebook covering Of Rice and Zen’s favourite city and indeed hometown. Kyoto is a dense city and one best traversed with a guidebook or local. Kyoto: The Greatest Travel Tips features great photography, maps, illustrations and sections on sightseeing, eating, shopping, culture, lodging, transport and local customs.

So far so standard you’re probably thinking. Well there are two things that make this book stand above the rest as far as Of Rice and Zen is concerned. Firstly, the book is entirely bilingual, so all location profiles are written in English and Japanese. Not only does that make it very useful for finding your way around Kyoto, but it also makes for a fantastic way to study Japanese. Study is always most successful if it immediately addresses a real-world need and in this case you can sightsee while you learn.

The second, and far more important, feature of the book is that it features a double page photo spread Of Rice and Zen editor Andy Heather. The shots were taken in the Arashiyama area in Northern Kyoto during 紅葉　(kouyou – “the turning of the autumn leaves”) and feature our trusty ed and his Kyoto neighbour Linton James gaying it up under a red blanket at the request of the book’s photographer.

Despite the fact that the production team had the pair sitting under a blanket in the street under a silver photography umbrella for long enough that passer’s by began to think they were Arashiyama’s first married gay couple, we are pleased to see that our editor has added another job to the growing roster that now includes editor, photographer, illustrator, designer, English teacher, translator and oh-so-camp model.

If you’d like to purchase a copy of the book for travel tips, Japanese study or for posterity, you can find a copy at the link below which will lead you to Of Rice and Zen’s Ebay store.

Title: Kyoto – The Greatest Travel Tips
Publisher: JTB Publishing
Price: ¥1200
ISBN: 798-4-533-07117-1

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