Having written over 10 guidebooks myself, I speak from experience when I say that working on these projects is a mixed blessing. Writing a first-time guide to a little-known part of the world, with the freedom to innovate with format and content, can be a rewarding task, but where there is a rigid template, it can be a thankless task. It's something of a miracle then, to find these two new guidebooks to Tokyo and Kyoto that seem freshly minted.