Customer Reviews:
  poorly edited, poorly fact-checked, not that cool September 28, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This slim guide seems like it would be a lot of fun to follow along with, but it's quite another matter to actually take it to Tokyo (as I did.) It's a Phaidon/Wallpaper production, so you know to expect slick prose and a somewhat slavish in/cool attitude -- that's fine. Tokyo is a materialistic city, after all, fascinated by cool, and where fashion is a popular sport.
But unfortunately, the guide does not amount to much more than its well-produced photographs; directions (in a city where directions are hard to come by) are fantastically poor (Naka-Meguro station or Meguro?), advice (when precise enough to follow) is of dubious value (e.g., unless your editor comps you cab rides, staying at the Claska hotel is a bad idea for exploring the city), assumes you can spend +$100/day on food and drink alone, and recommendations seem haphazard (e.g., the guide is right that Ebisu is an interesting visit, but the explicit suggestions it makes are puzzling.)
The "cheaper" recommendations -- i.e., not the advice to blow thousands on hotels and high-end shops and meals -- are the most problematic; poorly researched, you might blow 3000 Yen ($30) on a cover charge to discover a cold and uninviting space such as the X+Y. It is, in other words, a guide that "feels" much more accurate than it actually is.
For the visitor, Tokyo is a shopper's city where many streets look like a Blade Runner version of Fifth Avenue. The Wallpaper guide, one might hope, would give you a different side, something a little cooler, a little more offbeat. But once you subtract out the graphic design and the "insider's" tone, you are left with a few bits and pieces that don't add up to much more than you might find out browsing websites Metropolis or Bento.
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