Japanese for Travelers by Rutherford Scott

Author:Rutherford Scott
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4629-1059-5
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing

何 処

Doko?

Where?

Getting Around

WHERE?

Your taxi driver looks disturbingly lost, despite your having given him an address written in Japanese. He’s checked a detailed map, queried several pedestrians, and even stopped at the local police box, or koban, to get a final, authoritative word. Is he trying to run up the meter on you? No, he’s simply lost—but that doesn’t mean he’s incompetent.

Not only are urban streets often convoluted and thoroughly unsystematic, but most streets and roads in Japan lack names at all, and buildings lack unique street numbers. The address you’ve supplied simply puts the taxi driver in the right neighborhood. Beyond that, nailing down the destination is a process of narrowing down a list of possibilities, from larger to smaller: prefecture, city, ward, district, neighborhood. So as the taxi winds through Tokyo’s labyrinthine back alleys, pity the driver. He would rather your destination were in a large building with a name—Mori Building 644, for example—or a hotel that’s on the map.

Other than a lack of clearcut addresses, figuring out directions and locations is no different in Japan than elsewhere. If you can’t figure out where you are, and if others you ask are equally in a vacuum, there’s always a “police box” in the neighborhood. They usually know where everything is, no matter how obscure, and have maps indicating the most insignificant building, identified by number or family or business name. And always try to have your destination written in Japanese. It’ll illuminate the way eventually.

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