Аннотация

This useful Tokyo travel guide presents fourteen original walking tours that unlock some of Tokyo’s secrets and mysteries.Although Tokyo today is a sprawling urban patchwork of towns and wards, each of the city’s districts retains a unique charm and character.Discover, in a series of linked, engaging half-day excursions, the stories behind places like Hibiya's Hall of the Cry of the Stag and «Flying Head» of Marunouchi. Visit the sites where the Forty-Seven Ronin, the «last Samurai» General Nogi, and Yukio Mishima committed ritual Seppuku. In the sumo district see where the wrestlers fight, train and live, and just a bit farther on, the massive Thunder Gate of Senso-ji Temple.John and Phyllis Martin have visited Tokyo numerous times and know the city intimately. With detailed directions and maps, they introduce the background, the legends, and the sights that bring old Edo alive.

Аннотация

Children turned emperor, emperors turned priest, and priests turned poet are just a few of the colorful characters described in Kyoto: A Cultural Guide.The fascinating facts, larger-than-life characters and grand events described within offer abundant proof that, more than just a treasure house of shrines and temples, Kyoto is indeed one of the most enticing cities in the world.For example, Benkei, an eight-foot-tall monk with a wildly combative nature, was defeated on the Gojo Bridge by a voting warrior who had received his training in swordsmanship from a tengu goblin. Benkei's defeat is memorialized at Kyoto's Kiyomizu-dera temple in the form of an oversize iron staff and gela created by a blind blacksmith.Oishi entered into a life of debauchery at the lchiriki tea house in Gion with the sole intention of avenging the disgrace of his former master. After gathering together 46 other samurai, he exacted his revenge. Thus the tale of The Forty Seven Ronin was born.A guidebook to 14 walking tours, Kyoto: A Cultural Guide is also a kaleidoscopic reference and resource book certain to please long-term residents and first-time travelers.