WELCOME Arbiter!!!!!
As far as guidebooks, my personal favorite is Eyewitness. I always get one about the country I'm going to, but it is seriously a beautiful book (I know, I'm a dork) with glossy pages and pictures about historical places to see (not too much info about backpacking/traveling on a budget, etc.) It's also a nice souvenir in a sense; a book to keep and look back on. That being said, clearly you probably want some of the other books people have mentioned that would help you in other areas. The Eyewitness books are so nice that I wouldn't want to tear out any pages! I also agree with jw1313 about rick steves; I manuevered my way through London on my own, using a "self-guided" tour of the Thames River, and found it to be very useful and informative.
PS. If you can do it, awesome, but honestly, I think your itinerary for 2 weeks looks virtually impossible unless you want to be traveling the entire time and have literally a day in each places. The cities you mention are just all over the place....
PPS....I went to Egypt and want to learn Arabic! That's awesome you might get to! I know it's so hard, but if you could be fluent you would be in SUCH high demand; you could name your price and the govt. would probably pay it!
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Flight to Tokyo: 92,000 yen
Metro to Ginza shopping district: 160 yen
Watching middle-aged Japanese woman dance to U2: priceless
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