Following the release of Finding Fukuoka: A Travel and Dining Guide for the Fukuoka City Area, I have launched an online store over at FindingFukuoka.com. This means that my newest work as well as Osaka Insider: A Travel Guide for Osaka Prefecture are now available to customers in Japan. Both works can also be purchased together as a set for a discounted price.
Furthermore, customers in Japan have the option of adding and author signature and/or a personalized message to the book(s) they order. For customers in Europe and the United States, both Finding Fukuoka and Osaka Insider are still available as usual on amazon. Click on the appropriate link in the “My Publications” of the sidebar on the right or else visit to online store for links to relevant pages on Amazon in your country.
Thanks to everyone who has read the Osaka Insider guidebook so far! This is just a quick update to let you know that it is now available in Europe on Amazon.co.uk (UK), Amazon.de (Germany), Amazon.fr (France), Amazon.it (Italy) and Amazon.es (Spain) in addition to its Amazon.com (USA) availability.
Furthermore, the Kindle edition is now available for those of you who want to add it to your digital library (also available for Kindle on the above-mentioned European sites).
A quick follow-up to the previous post: Osaka Insider: A Travel Guide for Osaka Prefecture is now available on Amazon.com! Credit cards from any country are accepted, of course. It is still available through my online store, as well.
After much hard work, I have finally published my guidebook, Osaka Insider: A Travel Guide for Osaka Prefecture!!
This unique guidebook covers sightseeing destinations throughout Osaka Prefecture, both famous and unknown. Written by a Japanese-speaking American expatriate and former long-term resident of Osaka, it offers an unbiased and in-depth look into the best things to see and do in Osaka, whether you are a first-time visitor or local resident. The addition of ramen and okonomiyaki guides, festival and event information, rail and walking maps, general sightseeing information and tips, essays by the author and more make this the single most comprehensive English-language guide on Osaka Prefecture to date. It’s the guidebook that no visitor to Kansai should leave home without. Come to Osaka and discover the best-kept secrets of Kansai!
Currently it’s available through my online store, and also available on Amazon.com. For customers in Japan, you can still purchase it through the American Amazon site even if you have a Japanese credit card–the slowest international shipping option is very affordable, although it will take a little while to arrive (overseas express shipping options are also available). If you happen to live in or visit the Fukuoka area, I would be happy to sign your copy personally.
I have also created a Guidebook Maps page, which was designed to be used in conjunction with this guidebook. This is especially useful if you have internet access during your time in Japan.
One of the biggest motivating factors behind this project was the warm and support and encouragement I have received over the years from Osaka Insider’s readers, and for that I thank all of you. I hope you will consider purchasing Osaka Insider: A Travel Guide for Osaka Prefecture and discovering more of the great things Osaka has to offer!
Despite the fact that I’ve been living and writing in Fukuoka since early 2011, I have also been working on a thorough Osaka Prefecture guidebook for sightseers and foreign residents, titled Osaka Insider: A Travel Guide for Osaka Prefecture. It will cover Osaka City and the surrounding prefecture in detail, giving you information you can’t find anywhere else on interesting things to see and do. I have visited each destination personally and engaged in a massive amount of research to ensure that you can see the best Osaka has to offer, and the guidebook’s rating system for each destination helps travelers determine where to go first. There will also be detailed information for visitors coming to Japan for the first time, ramen and okonomiyaki restaurant guides, walking maps for the historical and retro buildings of the Kitahama/Yodoyabashi/Nakanoshima area, a few short essays and more!
I have added a new page to this site where you can access online maps for every destination and restaurant listed in the guide. This is meant to be used in conjunction with the printed guidebook when it is published, but you can browse it now to get an idea of what the guidebook will contain.
Look for Osaka Insider: A Travel Guide for Osaka Prefecture in late 2011 or early 2012!
I would like to highly recommend the book Hideyoshi by Mary Elizabeth Berry. It is the best academic work I have read on Toyotomi Hideyoshi, one of the most fascinating figures in the history of Japan and the world who made Osaka his base of power and played a crucial role in developing it into a thriving merchant town.
Hideyoshi was one of the three unifiers of Japan (the second, following the terrifying reign of Oda Nobunaga), and he brought together essentially the whole country in only a few years. Hideyoshi set a system in place that Tokugawa Ieyasu, who betrayed him and his son to take power after Hideyoshi’s death, would polish and use to usher in one of the most prosperous, stable, and culturally rich periods in Japanese history, the Edo Period (1600-1868).
Berry, who unfortunately has passed away, was one of the most talented Japanese historians of our time, and she not only spent a lot of time studying Hideyoshi, but Kyoto as well (which is where Hideyoshi spent most of his time when not on military or diplomatic campaigns around Japan). Hideyoshi, and his son and heir Hideyori, are two historical figures that are inseparably part of Osakan culture even today, and given the lack of English-language scholarship concerning Osaka and Hideyoshi, I consider Berry’s well-written and in-depth Hideyoshi a must-read for anyone who wants to understand Japanese culture on a deeper level. I can only hope that more historians will continue to write about the Toyotomi, and that a good book on Hideyori will also be written in the near future.
Academic books in English the focus on Osaka are not very common, as the focus has always been disproportionately skewed in favor of Tokyo, and to some extent Kyoto. However, there are a few good ones out there, and if you have an interest in Osakan history and culture I highly recommend taking a look at them.
This time I want to introduce The City as Subject: Seki Hajime and the Reinvention of Modern Osaka by Jeffrey E. Hanes, a history professor at the University of Oregon (it can be found at Amazon and Amazon Japan). This well-researched work focuses on Seki Hajime, an early-twentieth-century mayor of Osaka who strove to make the city a livable city at a time when it had acquired the fitting nickname “Manchester of the Orient.” Not only does this book focus on Seki Hajime and his career and aspirations, it encompasses urban planning history and political history as well. Among his other projects, this Osaka mayor led the development of Midosuji from a tiny street into the first grand north-south avenue in the city with the country’s second-ever subway line (this is now the most glamorous avenue in Osaka with the busiest subway line in Japan running underneath it). His ideas for a socially progressive style of urban planning to support social equality among citizens of the rapidly expanding industrial metropolis of Osaka have left their mark in Japanese history, and he would be glad to know that Osaka has truly become a vibrant, livable city like none other.
I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in Osakan history, and to any students of Japanese history who want to broaden their horizons and escape the trap of viewing Japan as a Tokyo-centered society.