How to Avoid Getting Lost in Japan

1. Get a Map
Get both a Japanese and an English version. The Japanese version is more likely to be up-to-date and accurate, plus it has the kanji, which will be what you actually see in the places you're going. The English, if it has romaji, will show you how to pronounce the kanji on the other map (but if it doesn't have phonetic versions of the place names and only has literal translations, it's basically useless for finding anything). Also try to get a map that shows your whole path, and then one that zooms in on the destination area (with a radius of several blocks), which is easy to do with Google maps, for example. Also, have hard copies in case Wifi or cell signal doesn't work.

2. Understand Japanese Addresses
Unlike America, street names, when they're available, will rarely help you. This is why a map is so important. A good way to approach Japanese address organization, from the American point of view, is to think of it this way:

Say we're looking for the University of Pittsburgh. Start with the United States. Divide it into 50 states. Choose Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is divided into counties. Find Allegheny County. Allegheny County is divided into cities and towns. Find the city of Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is made up of several neighborhoods. Find the neighborhood called Oakland.

That's about as close as you would get using just place names.

In Japan, the numbers in an address represent areas (rather than houses along streets) that are arbitrarily numbered. So they offer little help, since they give no sense of direction.

3. Look for Landmarks
Now you make a mental list of traffic lights/big streets/buildings/companies/schools/etc that you can look for once you arrive in the general vicinity. That way, if you lose track of which nameless street you are on and what direction you're going, you can use one of these landmarks to reorient yourself. In addition, if you get directions from people, they will use such landmarks in their explanations.

Now I'll give you a detailed example of these steps, using JCMU.

We'll start big. Japan.

Courtesy of Google Maps. The address for JCMU is written in romaji above.

Next we'll zoom in to see the prefectures.

You can see Shiga Prefecture in gray, near Kyoto and Nagoya (major cities).

 We'll zoom in more to see the cities.

Now we can see Hikone.

 Now we zoom in more.

Here we can see the train station names. Because public transportation is so widely used, the names of stations are good guides for knowing where you are. If you get lost, you can follow the train tracks.

 Here I zoomed in more, so we can see not only the station names, but also names of landmarks, such as Hikone Castle and Hikone Prince Hotel.

Look for landmarks.

 If we zoom in further, we can actually see the names of the cho, which weren't visible before, for some reason. JCMU is in Matsubara-cho.

Look for Matsubara-cho and JCMU (the red bubble...)~ Btw, rivers and bridges are also useful landmarks.

And finally, it never hurts to use street view to familiarize yourself with either the landmarks or the place you're looking for.

Final tip:
Telephone poles often have the address of the area, so if you're lost, look at the nearest pole for a set of kanji and numbers, which will tell you which the name of the chome and which number section of  it you are in.

Happy searching!

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

I had my first Japanese class (Level 3). From 8:50am-11:40am with a couple breaks, it was solid Japanese. I didn't know the routine, so I had to pay attention with all my might so I could catch up.

I was tired afterwards, but instead of sleeping I went to city hall with T and P to get our alien registration and national health insurance cards. We got lost on the way and stopped at the 市民会館 (shimin kaikan). We went inside the part labeled International Salon (or something like that), to ask for directions. The lady inside felt bad because the person who spoke English was unavailable, but I told her Japanese was fine. She gave us a map; we were actually only a minute's bike ride away.

So we made it to city hall, parked our bikes, and went inside. The other JCMU students who had gone earlier had told us to go to windows 2 and 4, but as soon as we entered the building, things got complicated. First of all, there weren't really any windows; just a long counter divided into numbered sections. Behind the counter was machines, file cabinets, and busy people moving around. In front of the counter were a couple waiting areas with couches and chairs, plus a few huge TV screens that would display the number of the next customer. We went to counter 2, and stopped in front of a touchscreen with three kanji-labeled buttons. Which one were we supposed to press? I looked at the applications we had filled out with the JCMU student Coordinator earlier, and based on the kanji there, said to press the middle button uncertainly. P immediately pressed the button, we followed suit, and 3 numbers printed out for us. We sat down to wait.

They called P's number, but when they saw it was us (foreigners), they had us all come up together. There was only room for two seats, which they offered to us. We obediently sat down, and followed their directions. We had to give them our passports and application forms. One of the forms we had to rewrite because the year printed on the paper was from last year. P needed help with writing her name in katakana, since she had only started learning Japanese a week ago. Several times, they sent us back to wait, then called us up again. They almost forgot to give P her passport back.

While we were waiting, there was a couple of Japanese guys (late 20s?) sitting next to us who seemed like they wanted to talk to us. They were the kind of guys with hair dyed brown, kinda of short and spiky; one of them had camouflage cargo pants. The kind of guy who looks like he rides a motorcycle (which isn't unusual for Japan, actually) and smokes. All of us chickened out though, so none of us said anything. P thought they were attractive.

After much confusion and difficulty, we successfully got our passports back and green sheets (of some sort of unclear importance), residence cards, and insurance cards (in little, clear plastic holders). We decided to stop by the library next, since the student coordinator recommended getting library cards. On the way, we got lost next to the castle moat, where we saw some swans.

Hikone castle wall and moat

P, T, and the swans at the Hikone Castle moat (not bad for a picture taken with an old school prepaid Softbank flip phone)

At the library, everything was in Japanese, but they did have an English info brochure, although some of the information seemed to be outdated. One of the librarians brought us a stack of magazines called the Hir@gana Times (http://www.hiraganatimes.com/), which was an amazing magazine with interesting and current articles about Japan, all written in English and Japanese with furigana. There were even some articles written in complete romaji. Each of us checked out some. When you check out books, they put a slip of paper in the book, with the due date stamped in red at the top. The paper has a calendar showing the days that the library is open or closed.

After the library, we stopped at Piago to shop, since it was the closest grocery store. I bought some cheap(?) salmon for 250 yen and vegetables. When I got back to JCMU, I did homework and made dinner.

Salmon, cabbage, daikon (a long, thick white radish), spinach, carrots, and soy sauce. The plastic wrapped thing is red bean paste with some sort of white, soft breadlike covering (sweet and yummy).

I heard later, from the beginner Japanese students, that when they went to city hall to do the same paperwork we did, a staff member guided their whole group through the process, beginning to end, so they had no trouble at all. >:s Why did I learn Japanese?