So English Language Maps in Japan Then...

Ok so today I had to rely on these godforsaken English language tourist maps, twice.  I got lost exactly three times.

As I've noted before the maps here are designed by small children with decidedly blunt crayons, bent on making pretty pictures rather than informative guides.  It is roughly 400 metres from my hostel to the train station with exactly five intersections between me and the station.  The map shows three.  This is how I got lost the first time.  Upon reaching the station (after a lengthy circular detour) I found that I had gone to the wrong one, because the name was mislabelled.  This is crazy, the only reason I knew it was misspelt in English was because the kanji (hieroglyphs used by the Chinese and Japanese) did not match up!  This is insanity.  In case you were wondering, some areas are called north and south xxxx, and the station I wanted was north, but I was directed to the south.

So I then headed to the correct station, only to be thwarted by another Japanese map making anomaly.  The map does not have a set scale.  At this point most logical minds would just explode.  This seriously does not compute.  A road that is five miles long can, and is, the exact same length as a road that is fifty metres long.  Come on now, the joker who designed this map is probably the same guy that designed the millenium bridge.

So I got lost again while walking along this infinitely long road.  Yokohama is the primary port town in Japan, and I was heading towards the ocean all the time thinking, by a logical process, looking at how far I travelled before, my feet, probably even up to my waist, should be wet by now.

At this point I feel I must stop and say, yes I have exclusively used tourist maps.  This is because road maps provide useful things like road names, but on a scale that could easily include Korea, China and Japan, with some of America on one A4 page.  The tourist maps don't provide road names, and then only some landmarks that the comedy map maker has deemed worthy of inclusion.  This means great swathes of the map will have nothing in them, including the roads, their names, their relative sizes/lengths or even the area, (called -cho) and some areas will have such useful things as, supermarkets that are no longer supermarkets, and apparently haven't been for five years or more, and 'sights of interest,' including fountains... that are on top of sixty storey skyscrapers that no one can see unless they happen to be on the 60th floor...

So I eventually found the venue, I met my friend, I enjoyed the day, and I promptly got lost on the way back to the hostel.

I managed to walk three full train stops past my intended destination, into an area the map thankfully did not cover (formally known as the, 'here be dragons' zone) and ended up getting the train back.  Whew, what an amazing day!

This is the first time crappy maps have really annoyed me, normally getting lost is fun and part of the adventure, I've found some really nice places while being 'lost.'  However, when I'm thirty minutes late meeting someone it really grates, and it's not fair on the person waiting, so it makes me stressed and annoyed, and probably reflects in my demeanour, at least until I calm down again.  Therefore the top tip, while in Japan, when you're going to meet someone is this, a trip that should take ten minutes will take an hour, and if you're just ambling around, chuck the map in the bin, write the name of your street and hostel down somewhere and just ask the people.  They're really rather helpful.

So I updated my ueno day 1 post, it's not finished yet but I have some downtime planned tomorrow, I'll do it then.  I might be able to get day 2 done as well.

Update:  Ueno park day 1 is finished!  Sorry for the delay...