Dear Japan Olympic and Tourism bureaus: please enable offline Google Maps

-
Grr! Why?!
One of the great tips for traveling internationally is to download an offline Google Map of the area you're visiting so you can find your way even when you don't have cellular or Wi-Fi access. Japan has blocked this feature for years. I have no idea why, but I have a lot of awesome conspiracy theories, most of which involve competing map products' CEO's belonging to the same country club as Japan's Google liaison.

But we're in the big run-up to the 2020 Olympics and all signs point to the fact that Japan is attempting in earnest to make things easier for visitors – expanding Wi-Fi access, adding more English/Chinese/Korean signage, standardizing the buttons on their famous toilets... So why the f&*k is this super-convenient feature still being blocked?

As an alternative, I've used Here maps. I've also heard many folks praise Maps.me. Navitime and Citymapper are also super useful for navigating Tokyo.

 

Furthermore…

While I'm on the topic of unsolicited advice that will never get read by anyone in power, there should absolutely be a national campaign to encourage restaurants and shops to stop using hand-lettered menus and signs so that visitors can quickly use Google Translate's image reading feature. Now the little mom and pop shop doesn't need to hire costly translators – just print that menu in a decent-sized font and Google could quickly turn it into Dutch on the user's phone. Or Thai. Or English. But I suppose this request assumes that Japanese people actually want foreigners eating in their restaurants, which might very well not be the case.

Srsly, how da fuq google sposta read this, Japan?








Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Finding and collecting Japanese Railway station stamps

-
Image
From Pokemon to Neko Atsume to shuinchou temple books , Japanese people love collecting things. If you've ever taken a ride on the glorious shinkansen bullet trains or ridden one of their extremely clean and punctual urban lines, then you know there's also a national obsession with great trains. The Eki stamp ("station stamp") is where those two obsessions meet . Most Japan Railways stations (including urban metro ones like the Yamanote line) have a unique stamp reflecting that station's history. Kids and train nerds (called "Tetchan") buy cute little books to collect the stamps of all the stations they've been to. The USA has a similar program with the national parks . One of my favorite stamps… All train-nerdiness aside, an Eki stamp book makes a great souvenir : it's flat, small, cheap, and light... and shouldn't take but a few moments to do when you're out and about. Special Eki stamp books are usually available at booksto
Read more

Southern Vermont's Frog Meadow Farm – a perfect getaway

-
Image
(updated October 2024) As I've said many times before , I'm not a big hotel person – I'd rather be out seeing the sights and meeting up with people than ensconced in the stylishly-bland, comfortable nowhere of a posh urban hotel. There are exceptions, though. Visiting a traditional Japanese ryokan inn immediately comes to mind. While they're often located in beautiful settings, the hotel itself is the primary destination. Beautiful seasonal food, soaking tubs and onsen baths, and lots of quiet time for just chilling out for a couple of days. For experiences like these, I'm very much a hotel snob. Wood-fired hot tub bliss Our first-ever trip to Vermont back in 2010 was specifically to visit Frog Meadow Farm in Newfane. A friend in San Francisco was describing it to us and it sounded a lot like an American ryokan for gay men: seasonal breakfasts, a wood-fired soaking tub, a massage studio, miles of private hiking and cross-country skiing trails, orchards and h
Read more

Where to find TOTO Washlets outside of Japan

-
Image
( updated Jun 2024 ) I love Washlet bidet toilets. I've had one in my house since my first visit to Japan 20 years ago and I love it when my hotel room or my plane has one. And it's not just me, the NYTimes wrote about them , and several competing brands have appeared in the US in recent years. If you want a Washlet in the sky, you don't have much of a choice – only ANA and JAL have them, and only in the premium cabins. (I think they have an exclusive arrangement with Toto, as we've not seen the Washlet appear even in the super luxurious middle eastern airlines that have butlers and onboard showers).  ウォシュレット! But what about hotels? As the spokesmodel in this commercial says, "I can't go on vacation anymore". A few of us were discussing this the other day and I said that yes, in fact, the presence of a Washlet would be a slam dunk for me when choosing a hotel. So I went poking around to find places outside of Japan that have them and started
Read more