How does giving directions work in Japan?
I'm struggling to understand how this would translate, "Go north three miles on High St. Turn left onto 2nd street and go 500m. Then take Park Ave south for 100m."
I'm struggling to understand how this would translate, "Go north three miles on High St. Turn left onto 2nd street and go 500m. Then take Park Ave south for 100m."
1) Go to / be pointed the nearest train station, then ask random people for help close by if still can't see the number somewhere or parse the names. People all over are super willing to help even with a language barrier. They'll usually point you up a few streets, at landmarks, or general direction. I'd often end up having to ask like 4 people on the way lol
2) If you're meeting with friends, you meet at the train station then go from there.
I don't know how anyone got around there before mapping software.
If you were roughing it on your own and only had the address, things got more interesting. Train stations always had detailed maps of major landmarks, so finding those was not an issue. If you were looking for something too small to be covered (say, a restaurant), you'd head to the chōme and then start winnowing down. Police boxes (koban) always had detailed neighborhood maps bolted to a wall nearby listing every single business and family by name, albeit usually in handwritten Japanese only, and you could ask the cops for directions too.
The final boss was the non-linear numbering house scheme though. Some friends and I once spent a fruitless hour searching for the HR Giger bar in Tokyo, which we knew was at X-Y-Z, but only managed to find X-Y-(Z+1) and X-Y-(Z-1).
"Go about ten minutes that way until you see the old Smith farm. [The Smiths haven't lived there for three generations.] Then take a left and head five minutes down Mill Road. [It's actually called something else, has never had a mill on it in its entire history, but is called that by the locals nonetheless.]" Eventually you start wondering when you tripped and fell into a Discworld novel.
1. Get the hotel / company / restaurant's business card with the address in kanji
2. Show that to your taxi driver
3. Taxi driver ignores the address and puts the phone number in their GPS
or
1. Take the train/metro to the approximate location
2. Your destination will be noted in the signage by exit number
Step (2) is especially fun at Shinjuku, at which point you call your friend who says they'll meet you at the South Gate. Which one though?
"Turn left at this coffee shop, right at the second church..."
When my wife first moved to the U.S. from Korea I couldn't figure out why she was so insistent on using landmarks to navigate, but eventually learned this was the reason. When we went out to rural areas where I grew up, she would become completely lost because it's not generally as landmark dense and the mental system she had accumulated didn't work as well. That was when she finally had to learn the U.S. system.