Kyoto: The Greatest Travel Tips

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Sep 022008

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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Andy Heather

Why thank ye kindly sir. Your site is very informative too. I'll gladly link to it for a couple of months if you'd like to write a piece on Japan for Of Rice and Zen Magazine.
Andy

Ichiro

Looks like an awesome book. The illustrations are outstanding. Very nice web site, bu the way : )

Andy Heather

This is true. You'll notice that my mouth is... wait, hold the phone... HIRO NAKAMURA IS GAY???!!! I did not realise that. Anyway, you'll notice that my mouth is open because I'm trying to tell the guy that everyone is looking at us and I'd really like to get out of the rickshaw now because I'm pretty sure they're thinking we're Kyoto's first gay couple.
Strangely, none of the Japanese people I've shown it to - even the ones who are usually more than willing to take the mickey - have seen anything gay about it. I guess aesthetic tastes are different here.
For example in England no-one would be able to do "peace fingers" for a photo without irony, but here people actually won't take the shot if you're not doing it and will request you put your fingers up. It's not optional it seems.
Andy