Book excerpt: This beautifully photographed Japan travel pictorial features all the most famous sites in Japan along with extensive notes and even maps. Shop along tree-lined streets filled with exclusive boutiques, stroll in ancient temple grounds, strike a business deal on the thirty-second floor of a chrome-and-glass skyscraper, get swept up in the crowds, or sip sake with newfound friends in a bustling neighborhood pub. Tokyo—once a maze of rice-paddies and quiet wooded villages called Edo—is now a tableaux of old and new, where wooden houses meet modern skyscrapers on streets with no names. Welcome to the gateway of the twenty-first century.