Even though I’ve basically lived in the same place for more than 20 years, it’s still easy to get turned around, misdirected, and just generally confused. As a native, it’s kind of embarrassing.

So you can imagine that finding my way around in Japan is ten times as bad. But during the month we spent in Japan earlier this year, I learned a lot about navigating Japan and finding my way around.

Let’s assume that you’re in Japan and that you have phone service. You may think that because you have a phone with an internet connection, you’re invincible. GPS will deliver you to your destination without any problems.

We used Google Maps a lot (a lot) in Japan, but it wasn’t a cure-all. Even with a map of the world in your hands, there are still a few problems.

Japanese Addresses Are Different

A lot of people don’t realize this, but addresses work diffrently in countries around the world. Because of that, the format of Japanese addresses doesn’t always make sense to foreigners.

Fortunately, we wrote about how the Japanese address system works a few years back; but for those who missed it, here’s a quick recap:

You know streets? Those things that cars drive down and have names? You can basically forget about them in Japan.

Streets pretty critical in the American address system (they’re sometimes even called “street addresses”), but the Japanese system instead relies on areas.

Japanese addresses break down in this order:

1. Prefecture
2. Municipality
3. Location within municipality
4. District
5. Block
6. House number

Note that a street name isn’t anywhere in that list. That can be kind of a culture shock to people used to something different.

Even once you understand the Japanese address system, there are other oddities and obstacles to getting around.

Unreliable Maps

You might want to know the phone number to the place you’re going to, since a lot of Japanese GPS systems accept phone numbers in addition to addresses, and a phone number can be much easier to remember.

Don’t count on always being able to rely on your GPS, either. While some (like Google Maps) are pretty reliable, others are really undependable.

Apple Maps has been even worse in Japan than the rest of the world (although it’s been getting better), and if you’re old-fashioned and have a dedicated GPS (instead of a phone), you can forget about it.

Most dedicated GPS from the US and other countries just don’t have Japanese map information built in. You might be able to download the maps you need, but it’s probably not built-in.

Helpful Tools

It might sound like I’m trying to make it sound like it’s hard to get around in Japan, but it’s really not! Public transportation is obviously world-class in much of the country, and people are almost always friendly and willing to help you out.

Plus, there are lots of guides out there (like this one from Surviving in Japan) made specifically for foreigners visiting Japan.

And if you’re looking for a maps app to help you out, there are more and more Japanese-made apps popping up by the day (thanks in part to the failure of Apple Maps).

With those tools, your own smarts and intuition, and some hard work, it can be simple to get wherever you want to go in Japan.

Now where the hell was I going again?

One of Japan’s biggest needs has been space. Japan is a pretty small country with a lot of mountains and a ton of people. These factors together sometimes limit what Japan can do with what land it has.

So what do the Japanese do? They make more space by creating artificial, man-made islands. Unlike the crazy extravagant artificial islands of Dubai, most of Japan’s man-made islands are actually quite functional.

Before I go any further, I know that you have a serious, burning question you need to ask. Fortunately, our friends over at Ask.com have answered it for us:

Dejima【出島】

Surprisingly, Japanese artificial islands have been around for hundreds of years. You’d expect that artificial islands would require giant diggers, barges, and other mechanized monstrosities, but people still somehow managed to make man-made islands in the days before the industrial revolution.

Take Dejima, for example. Created in the 1600^s Dejima, located in Nagasaki, was one of Japan’s first artificial islands.

Way back in the day when Japan was more than a little distrustful of foreigners, they kept interaction with the outside world at the absolute bare minimum. Trade and visitation were severely limited to everybody outside of Japan for about 200 years.

Artist’s depiction of Dejima around the 1800s

Those foreigners who were allowed to come to Japan were kept at arm’s length. The shogunate wanted one dedicated place where foreigners could trade in Japan, and decided to create Dejima to be that place.

You know the kid who was always picked last for kickball in school? Dejima is like that times a million. The Japanese think that you’re so icky that they built an island just so they don’t have to deal with you?

That’s cold.

Artist’s depiction of Tokugawa Japan

Eventually, Japan got over its whole fear of foreigners, and there wasn’t really a need for Dejima anymore. Nagasaki grew, caught up with Dejima, and eventually absorbed it into the city.

Nowadays, Dejima has been lost within Nagasaki; but the Japanese government has declared Dejima historical site and are working on figuring out its exact location in Dejima and restoring it to its original state.

Odaiba【お台場】

Odaiba, like Dejima, is an artificial island that was built because of scary, scary foreigners. After Commodore Perry rolled up on Japan and told the Japanese to come out of isolation or else, the shogunate decided to prepare for the worst. A series of gun batteries were built in Tokyo Bay to defend the city from any potential attacks.

The attack from the outside never came, and the islands fell into disuse until the 20^th century. Local government gradually repurposed and built upon these islands, transforming them from old, unused gun batteries into places where people live, work, and play.

Since Odaiba has sprung to life, it’s gained its own character. Odaiba houses the iconic Fuji Television building, and has a bunch of tourist attractions. A miniature replica of the Statue of Liberty overlooks Tokyo Tower, and a giant Gundam has attracted flocks of otaku to Odaiba for over two years.

A Gundam isn’t quite what the shogunate had in mind when they built Odaiba to house weapons, but hey, it’ll do.

Kansai Airport【関西国際空港】

As impressive as artificial islands like Dejima and Odaiba are, they pale in comparison to Kansai International Airport (KIX). The construction of KIX is an engineering marvel built at the peak of the Japanese economic powerhouse of the mid 20^th century.

The city of Osaka wanted a first-class international airport, but couldn’t make it happen by conventional means. Osaka didn’t have the space, and building an airport in the middle of the city would have caused a ton of noise pollution and myriad safety issues.

So what did Osaka do? It built an island.

Construction started in the late 80^s and, through years of work, tons and tons of landfill, and $20 billion, Kansai Airport opened in 1994. Its creation wasn’t without problems, though.

Kansai Airport’s designers grappled with the problem of sinking. Even after you’ve created a man-made island, you still have to deal with the island sinking into the soft ground below it. Designers have dealt with this problem by adding more material into the island and fitting the buildings with hydraulic lifts to keep them level and elevated.

And, believe it or not, KIX has held up pretty well. It’s weathered typhoons and earthquakes, including the devastating 1995 Hanshin Earthquake.

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There are plenty more fake islands in Japan, but these are the ones that seemed most significant to me. Did I miss any? Which is your favorite? Let me know in the comments!

[Header image source]

Case in point, I recently saw the picture above and was astounded to learn that it’s part of Japan. Say hello to the Japanese island of Aogashima.

Aogashima (“blue island”) is Jurassic Park the setting for “Battle Royale” a tropical, volcanic island in the Phillipine Sea. Despite being over 200 miles away from the country’s capital, Aogashima is governed by Tokyo. In fact, a whole stretch of tropical and sometimes uninhabited islands called the Izu Islands are technically part of Tokyo. Volcanic islands? Not typically what comes to mind when you think of Tokyo.

No matter where you go in Japan, there are always karaoke and perverted beer posters.

As you might imagine, Aogashima isn’t the most crowded place in the world. As of this year, only about 200 people live on Aogashima. The island only has one post office and one school.

There are two ways on and off the island: by helicopter or by boat. There’s only one, small harbor where the boats go in an out of, and it seems to be a little unreliable. Because Aogashima is so remote and isolated, it can sometimes be hard to get a boat to or from the island safely.

Fortunately, there’s a live video feed of the harbor that’s available on the island 24/7 (Jurassic-Park-style) so you can keep an eye on how bad the weather is without having to actually be at the harbor.

These creatures require our absence to survive, not our help. And if we could only step aside and trust in nature, life will find a way.

Bearing in mind how isolated Aogashima is, there’s not a whole lot to do on the island. The biggest attraction is Aogashima’s double volcano (all the way across the sky!). The island itself is a giant volcanic crater, and within that crater there’s another, smaller volcano. You can camp by the volcano or go to the volcanic hot springs on the island, but that’s pretty much it.

With so few attractions and such a tiny population, its nightlife might pale a little in comparison to Tokyo’s. The food’s probably not that great. There aren’t as many temples as in Kyoto. And you know what? Their internet probably sucks too. But that’s not why you go to Aogashima.

Even though I’ve never been personally, Aogashima seems like a great place to go to simply get away from it all. How often do you get the chance to visit such an beautiful, isolated place?

It’s also amazing to think about what it must be like to grow up and live in a place like Aogashima. I grew up in the suburbs of a pretty populated area, so the thought of living in a place so far removed from others is hard to imagine.

Check out Flickr user izuyan’s set of jaw-dropping pictures from Aogashima here. (Do yourself a favor and watch the slideshow in fullscreen: the pictures are gorgeous.)

And if you’re thinking about taking it one step further and actually visiting Aogashima, check out this write-up on Seek Japan or visit the island’s official site (JP).

P.S. Wish you could visit Aogashima? Tell us on Twitter.
P.P.S. Much prefer to stay on dry land? Check us out on Facebook or Google+.

All that being said, that’s only “Western” people we’re talking about. Japan was pretty xenophobic until the 1800′s, and they didn’t “get out” much. You could say that about all the Asian countries hanging about back then. It wasn’t until the 1600′s that Japan “saw the world for the first time” (in map form)… and boy did it look beautiful.

Matteo Ricci: Missionary and Map Maker

Forgive me for taking us to China for a bit. This isn’t a blog about China, but this is where the story starts.

Matteo Ricci (pictured above) was born in Italy in 1552. He wanted to become a missionary in India, but instead was dispatched to China where he arrived in 1582. He was in a Portuguese trading post (Macau), where none of the other Missionaries (or anyone, really) had to learn any Chinese. Because he was forward thinking, or bored, or something inbetween, he became one of the first Westerners to be able to read Chinese script. He and another guy, Ruggieri (one of the only other Missionaries who studied Chinese) then went around mainland China to do their missionary duties.

Apparently, he was already pretty skilled at map making, and was invited to stay in Zhaoqing (an area of China), where in 1584 he Ricci composed the first European-style map in Chinese. The original map does not survive, but there are many copies, some of which eventually made it to Japan (and are there to this day).

The Kunyu Wanguo Quantu

Click the map for a bigger version, or click here for huge version

The Kunyu Wanguo Quantu (坤輿萬國全圖), which means “A Map of the Myriad Countries of the World” was originally created in 1584 (by Ricci, of course), and had other editions created after. The above image is the third revision (created in 1602). This map is very large (1.5m by 3.66m), and of course shows China/Asia as the center of the world (European maps of the time normally showed Europe as being in the center). Overall, this map was pretty good, I’d say.

It made its way to Japan eventually, though it never really took hold like it did in China (at least not right away). Japan had its own World maps, though, and a lot of the information was said to have come from Ricci’s maps.

The First Japanese Map Of The World

Although the Kunyu Wnguo Quantu was making its rounds, it was largely a Chinese thing, and didn’t become incredibly popular until it was copied later on by Nagakubo (keep reading). One of the first Japanese world maps in Japan was actually a Buddhist map, which means all kinds of interesting things. Before we look at that, though, let’s take a look at Japanese Buddhist “World” Maps before they started incorporating the other countries of the world. These maps, called nansenbusho, consisted of only three countries: China, India, and Japan.

I wouldn’t say this map would be particularly useful for someone trying to find any of these countries, but China is in the Northeastern section, India makes up the inverted triangle shape at the bottom, and Japan is an island off to the East. These maps centered on the Buddhist world, and have a lot of Buddhist landmarks. The whirlpool in the middle, for example, is the center of the universe, which is a lake where Queen Maya gave birth to the Buddha.

This new map, printed in 1710 (considerably after Ricci’s map) is the first nansenbushu that contained the rest of the world. It’s thought that Ricci’s map had made some circulation by this time, and the author of this map heard about the rest of the world enough to make some fun guesses. Then again, the map with only India, China, and Japan wasn’t particularly accurate from a cartographic standpoint, so I guess I shouldn’t be expecting that much.

Yes, this is a map of the world – See a zoomable version of this map here

This new map, called “Nansenbushu bankoku Shoka no zu” is thought to be the first Japanese map to depict the rest of the world (outside of the three main Buddhist Countries at the time). Of course, you have to remember this is a Buddhist map, meaning things are mapped by religious significance (rather than actual accuracy), meaning India and China get a big portion of the map… most of it, in fact.

You can see India because of the peninsula at the bottom. China and Japan get a pretty big piece of the pie as well. In fact, this map is mostly made up of the three countries, so where is the rest of the world?

Europe is in the top left corner – as you can see, mostly just place names are written in – there’s nothing there of any (religious) importance, it’s just kind of up there, consisting of a bunch of islands. Countries like England, Holland, Hungary, Italy, France, and others are represented.

Supposedly Africa, this small island off to the West is labeled as the “Kingdom of Western Women.” Awesome.

In the top right, it also seems as though they have Alaska and the Aelutian land bridge, which means even the Americas got some map cred. Obviously this is the most accurate part of the map – Alaska is still just a blank sheet of ice with mountains (just kidding people from Alaska).

I think this particular map is pretty awesome – it shows how the importance of certain things really can dictate how a map is drawn out. Obviously a big part is a lack of knowledge at the time of how other countries are laid out, but you can definitely see what’s important on this map (Buddhism) and what’s not (everything else). The scale of this map really wasn’t to scale in terms of land mass. Instead, it was to scale in terms of religious importance. I think India wins in this one. That’s where Buddha was born, after all.

Of course, maps like this couldn’t go on forever… not with Ricci’s maps making its rounds since the early 1600s. Eventually, someone made a world map for Japan that gained a lot of traction.

Nagakubo Sekisui’s Revised World Map

I think it’s fairly reasonable to assume that the copies of Ricci’s maps (which did make it to Japan) were some of the first good world maps that Japan had ever seen. Considering how closed off Japan was to the rest of the world at the time, a map of the world in a language that some Japanese people could read (at least better than English, or some other European language) must have been really interesting. Still, Ricci’s maps weren’t necessarily widely distributed, meaning the world was probably a mystery to a lot of people (though by this time people knew that other countries besides India, China, and Japan existed, of course).

Then along came Nagakubo Sekisui. He took Ricci’s map and copied it in woodblock print form. He didn’t just copy maps for a living (we’ll cover that in a sec), but I’d say he did a good job on this one. He made some revisions to the map, redrew it, and added katakana to his copy to make it more readable.

Zoom in and out of this map – I’d recommend full screen mode. Also viewable here

This map is known as the “Revised and Complete World Map” which supposedly came out in 1785. If you compare it to the original (Ricci’s) you can see there’s a bit more detail, especially in and around Asia. The main difference is the art style (definitely more Japanese/Asian) as well as the fact that it’s readable in Japanese, which is pretty cool.

Some interesting things about this map (as well as Ricci’s map):

• Florida is the “Land of flowers”
• The Sahara Desert seems to have a lot more water than I imagine it, at least
• “Sea of Japan” is omitted in this one, even though it’s in Ricci’s original

And I’m sure there are a ton of other interesting things in there, just waiting to be discovered. I’m guessing (someone will have to let me know) that a lot of the translations on this map come from Italian, which is a language I do not speak, though a lot of the katakana on this map definitely are close enough to the English versions where you can figure them out. イタリア is still イタリア, anyways.

The really interesting thing to me is that this is considered to be one of the first mainstream world maps in Japan. It was 1785 for goodness sakes! That’s almost 200 years after Ricci made his world maps, which were pretty darn good. I’m guessing this was mostly caused by how closed off Japan was from the rest of the world… but still, 1785 wasn’t that long ago if you think about it!

“Modern” Maps Of Japan

The guy who did the revised world map (Nagakubo Sekisui) also did some of the first “good” maps of Japan (he wasn’t only a copycat). He was the first Japanese map maker to use “geographical coordinates.” Seems like something you’d want to do, though I’m no map maker. As you can see in the map above, Hokkaido (Ezo, back then) was omitted from this map, apparently because this area wasn’t totally known yet. It’s Japanese frontier country, after all. You can find a lot of his works here, which are pretty nice, if you’re into that kind of thing (talking about maps, you sicko).

There was another (arguably much better) map-maker in town at around the same time, though, who’s name was Ino Tadataka, though he wasn’t as well known for quite a while (now he’s like the cartographer of Japanese history books). Tadataka was hired by the Shogun himself to make a map of Japan. He spent the last 17 years of his life working on this map (which sadly, he didn’t live to see finished). He supposedly spent 3,736 days taking measurements, traveling nearly 35,000 kilometers, working to finish a 1:216,000 map of the entire coastline of Japan. He died in 1818, but his team finished it 1821.

Part of his map – the 3d and 2d mix is pretty interesting, I think

The maps by Nagakubo were widely distributed and used up until the 1860s, even though they weren’t as good as Ino’s. Ino’s maps were kept secret by the Shogun for a while, plus they came out much later (1821 versus 1785). Ino’s maps were of much higher quality, though (and quality is king, I’d say), and were used for much longer (as late as 1924) due to their incredible accuracy (much of it accurate to 1/1000 of a degree!). Ino also worked on maps of Hokkaido, as well. He even has a statue to commemorate his map making skillz.

Into The Future

Of course, the future has brought us an unprecedented level of map accuracy. With satellite images, technology, yadda yadda, maps are pretty good. One of my favorite “new” map features is of course Google Street View. Not only can you see a top down view of Japan, but you can get right down into almost any street, and see a 360 degree picture of that particular part of that particular street. If someone told me you’ll be able to do that ten years ago, I’d probably have thought they were crazy.

Makes me wonder, though – Did people back then think “this map is as good as it gets!” just like I’m doing with maps right now? I imagine there are some things that can be done, like 3D rendering of land height / etc., but what else is there to do? I suppose there’s a lot of crowdsourced options, where people add in tons of information about local spots, which would help people find more interesting things, but where do you go from there?

Anyways, as you can see, Japan has come a long way in terms of how they see the world and how they see themselves (from a map-perspective, anyways). I kind of miss the old style maps – they definitely were as artistic as they were useful (or just artistic, in some cases). Maps nowadays are way more useful, but they lack the same style and feeling that old maps had. I guess that’s because maps aren’t really hand drawn anymore. Those were the days, eh?