Hidden Tokyo: A Tokyo Guidebook to Unlock its Magic
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The only Tokyo neighborhood guide, designed to show you the best the city has to offer.
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A Hidden Tokyo Guidebook
Hidden Tokyo: The Essential Neighborhood Guidebook to Experience Tokyo's Hidden Magic, is designed to share with travelers the essence of what makes Tokyo special.
Hidden Tokyo is a specific Tokyo guidebook that's designed to help travelers see and experience the best of Tokyo. I spent four amazing years living in Tokyo, and you can say I fell in love with Tokyo from the start.
But, Tokyo is a complicated city, and the language barrier doesn't help much either. I can honestly say that it took me two years of living in Tokyo before I even began to understand this culture and get my bearings.
I spent every chance I had exploring this city, though, and what I left with was a plethora of knowledge and love that needed to be shared. For that reason, I wrote this guidebook from the impetus of love. Tokyo's a city that I grew to love and respect, and for that reason, it made writing 450 pages not necessarily easy, but it was inspired.
A Tokyo Neighborhood Guidebook
What makes Hidden Tokyo an exceptionally useful guidebook is that I wrote it from the premise of a neighborhood guidebook. Every other Tokyo guidebook will group the city together in regions and then offer a bunch of recommendations for places that are pretty generic.
It's my intention with this Tokyo Guidebook to allow the traveler to grasp Tokyo on a deeper level. That's why I believe a neighborhood guidebook is more effective.
My intention is to help travelers orientate themselves in this wonderfully complex city within its 400+ pages. The essence of this guidebook is a structural organization that divides the city into administrative wards (chapters) and then its neighborhoods. And inside each neighborhood, you'll find personal recommendations for places to see, things to do, and where to eat.
Included are even vegan and vegetarian-friendly icons to better help indicate dietary preferences in a city that's notorious for difficult eating.
I wrote this book with the desire to share with fellow travelers just what makes Tokyo so special. It's not a book about Tokyo's history, but rather, an orientation of its essence.
Do you want to know where to find the top Old Tokyo Shitamachi spots? Or what treasures to find around Tokyo Station? Or what teahouses to go to? Do you get acquainted with over 20 of Tokyo's top neighborhoods and learn why each is special in its own right?
Hidden Tokyo's a Tokyo guidebook that's designed for both helping the traveler to actually know this city. This requires a specific approach to organization and writing.
Read the Preface to Hidden Tokyo
I've structured this book to help travelers grasp Tokyo in a more digestible way. My aim is for travelers to leave Tokyo feeling not overwhelmed, but able to experience and conceptualize this city in a way that helps them to appreciate what makes Tokyo so special.
This complex, foreign city can quickly feel overwhelming and elusive, and I intend to help break the city down into digestible parts – its neighborhoods. Anything is much more knowable if you map out the elements.
Each neighborhood has a unique personality of its own. If you want to know Tokyo below the surface and to have a more enriching travel experience, you've stumbled upon the right guide.
I approached writing this Tokyo guidebook from the standpoint of a neighborhood guide – I feel it is the only way to cover Tokyo properly. I breakdown nearly 30 of the major districts and neighborhoods around Tokyo, and I also provide an introduction and background for each neighborhood to help you better grasp its essence. And within each chapter, I give categories on top things to do, shopping, and places to eat.
In Section IV, you'll also find an additional section of 20 helpful lists that you can also quickly reference for various ideas.
15 Tokyo Hidden Gems To Explore Across the City
Additionally, as an artist and photographer myself, I recommend some significant and relevant architectural and design destinations. Tokyo is a city with a vast appreciation for art and architecture, and I feel it's essential for any comprehensive guidebook to touch on these components as well.
The layout of this book is also aesthetically motivated. Every photograph and manga image you see is of my work and may not be copied or reproduced. I spent years photographing Tokyo, and I decided to include many of these photographs to illustrate the magic of this city better.
This book divides into parts that reflect my own experience and interpretation of Tokyo and Japan. It consists of narrative insights as well as in-depth personal travel recommendations. It serves as a sort of hybrid, which makes it a different breed of travel guide – a combination of narrative, practicality, and art.
Overall, this book has been the culmination of a love affair with a country and a city. After four years of living in Japan and relentlessly traveling Tokyo with all of the enthusiasm that a traveler can muster up, this book was finally born. It touches on the heart of what makes Tokyo so appealing – its complexity.
But, if you can peel back those layers and map out the city in such a way that's both specific and digestible, then the average traveler will be able to leave, knowing this city a whole lot deeper. But more importantly, they'll leave as a different person for having seen and experienced its richness. Travel truly is the best form of education.
I always said I wanted to write a book about my travels, and it seems that things happen at the right time. I hope that this allows you to experience and know the magic and depth of one of the greatest cities in the world (if not the greatest) – something that took me nearly four years to discover."
There are over 50 chapters of invaluable Tokyo insight and wisdom, gained from years of in-depth exploration and hundreds of miles explored by foot.
I'm spent nearly a year writing this book so I can say that it's not something thrown together in a couple of months and then pandered online to make money. It's real and it's reflective of the richness of this city and I did my best to do the city justice.
If you're heading to Tokyo, I recommend my guidebook, Hidden Tokyo. It's an original neighborhood guide that takes you into over 20 of Tokyo's most interesting neighborhoods. It's over 400-pages full of advice, earned from 4 years of relentless exploration. Take your trip to the next level. Get it now.
Tokyo Guidebook
Stephanie January 19, 2020
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