Gregory Starr: GPS is the traveler's enemy
A study published late last year by a U.S. national newspaper showed a surprisingly large percentage of GPS users suffering from the digital blues to such an extent vacations and even trips to the local store were being dashed against the twin rocks of hope and common sense.
Our intrepid travelers reported being plagued with all kinds of problems: more than a third had experienced difficulties simply finding the right address, a quarter had dealt with convoluted (read “idiotic”) directions and a not miniscule 14 percent claimed they couldn’t even see the screen because of glare.
What wasn’t included in the article was the degree that navigation systems of all shapes and sizes have reduced the collective IQ of the global population, which is a polite way for saying they’ve basically made us more stupid when we hit the road.
Remain in your vehicle, please sir
I was offered a ride the other day, and despite the fact that a mid-afternoon journey by car in Tokyo often ends up taking longer than earning a black belt in any of the martial art disciplines, I accepted.
Five minutes into the trip, however, I was ready to jump out of the car and take my chances with the oncoming lane of traffic.
My gracious host, though a native of Tokyo, had her nose in the GPS system, and her complete attention on the voice insisting in the most irritating digital whine that we continue on the straight and narrow road on which we were traveling.
I have a pretty good sense of how to get around this city. I spent a year driving a meat delivery truck here in the days when men read maps and women didn’t care.
I spent a year learning the ins and outs of one of the great inventions of city planning -- the Tokyo address system.
Is using the almost invisible tiny sex toy store over the much larger flower shop as a landmark meant to be reflection of the hosts’ shopping habits?
How wards (like Shinjuku) are divided in areas with names (like Yotsuya), which are then divided into neighborhoods with numbers (like 3-chome), which are then divided into numbered blocks with numbered properties running around the block.
In most cities, the streets make up the grid; here it’s the blocks that lead you to your destination. To make it even more interesting, it’s all done pretty randomly, so block 2 isn’t necessarily between 1 and 3.
Despite countless developments over the years, most of the roads and shortcuts that I learned back then still exist. So, when I suggested several quicker alternative routes to my kind driver as we made our halting way across the northeastern quadrant of the city, I wasn’t being a chauvinist.
Each time I did, however, my friend would look at me with disdain; who was I, her look said, to challenge the omnipotent knowledge of the Mistress’ Voice echoing through the car’s interior.
I’m not a total Luddite. Still, I find it very difficult to abandon the challenge of reading and interpreting maps. See, I loved poring over the legends of Tokyo roads, attempting to match the kanji characters on the map page to the ones on the order for 800 grams of lean ground round and four Polish sausages.
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