I had a lot of trouble with maps in Japan. Of course, mostly they are in Japanese but a fair amount of English here and there.
But often they baffled me. I couldn't make any sense of them.
Mainly because:
a. Japanese maps don't necessarily show north being up. Could be whatever they thought looked best
b. Japanese maps are not always to scale.
c. Maps of the same area can show completely different landmarks. You can't count on temples and shrines being displayed because there's zillions of them. One mapmaker might include one temple, another might feature a different one.
d. And, us tourists, don't read Japanese so bob's your uncle
At one point, I was sitting next to Nobuko on the bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto. She had her Japanese map, I had a guidebook map in English. We were trying to plan our sightseeing strategy. But I could not relate my map to hers. They looked like they should be the same, but I could not find common landmarks. Finally I just gave up.
Actually, this one in Ueno Station was reasonably helpful. Quite a few maps on signs in Ueno Park but they didn't seem to relate much to each other.
"Don't even look" advised Dennis when I spotted a new map display "it will just make it worse.
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