The Michelin Guide Tokyo 2009 will be released on November 21 with a Nagano and Kansai version to be released around March 2009.
This will be an updated version of the inaugural edition of the restaurant guidebook that sold 300,000 copies.
The main store of bookshop operator Maruzen Co. in Tokyo's Marunouchi district is preparing for the release of the Michelin Guide Tokyo 2009 with the same level of intensity for the Harry Potter series. A countdown board and roughly 20 posters are put up on the walls. This time, the store plans to get in more than twice the volume of the inaugural edition.
The Michelin Guide uses a three-star rating system and relies on text. Not all restaurants selected also receive stars. Michelin however thoroughly studied the Japanese market so the Tokyo edition uses many photos plus for the first time in the guidebook's history, contains only restaurants that got stars. This strategy attracted a wide range of readers from young women to middle-aged men in Japan.
Before Michelin became involved, restaurant guidebooks in Tokyo were divided into two categories -- magazines that carry a lot of photos but without reliable rating and books for gourmets with serious survey and ratings but without appealing photos. Michelin found a niche -- a guidebook with reliable ratings and mass appeal -- which led to it becoming a hit. This strategy remains unchanged for the 2009 edition. Michelin aims to attract repeat customers by expanding areas and restaurants covered in the book while reaching out to foreign tourists to Japan.
Japan is a promising market for restaurant guidebook publishers, as the government tries to raise the number of overseas tourists to 10 million in 2010. One addition which indicates how Michelin is targeting non-Japanese readers is a new symbol that informs customers of restaurants marked with it will need to remove their shoes.
Sushi Mizutani in Tokyo's Ginza district was rated 3 stars in the 2008 edition and said they saw an increase in patronage including a 30 percent rise in the number of foreign customers.
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