tokyo, wayfinding

Tokyo is a confusing place and it's reassuring to know that other people need help as well. Directional signage proliferates and the Japanese tend to be graphically savvy. Maps, floorplans, and building sections proliferate in cartoonized and diagrammatic form. The image on the left is a diagrammatic section of a large department store showing what is sold on each floor and placing the vertical circulation. It seemed to be legible to the lady reading it although she did spend an awful long time looking at it. The image on the right is an interactive touch-screen map of the area around Shibuya. These are new. I filled out a questionnaire and got a free bottle of tea for trying it out. It works in English, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese and can even download directions to your cellphone. It didn't help me find the bookstore I was looking for, but it did have all the convenience stores marked according to seven or eight different companies. There's a veritable cloud of convenience stores in Tokyo so that's the one category I can't imagine people would need help with, but its inclusion fits the culture perfectly.