When I first moved to Ubuyama it quickly became clear that a car would be a necessity. My predecessor told me how the first JET’s mental health had suffered because he did not have one (he was wholly dependent on bumming rides), and sold me his ’89 Civic for just under $1,000. Justin visited me, bringing a used subwoofer and a Cobra radar detector. He took me shopping for a cheap new CD player single din head unit, a few tools and supplies for the car, and left me with two tasks: replace the sound system, and buy a Super Mapple, Japan’s superior answer to the still-relevant Thomas Guide. I found one in a convenience store for 6,000 yen, a price at the time which seemed pretty steep, but ended up being an indispensable navigation aid (this is when navigation systems were still prohibitively expensive and were orders of magnitude better in Japan than in the US).
Over the next two years, I tested the durability and dependability of the Civic (I miss that rock-solid, bea up hatch back) and the sound system, and planned trips almost every weekend all over Kyushu to see as much of by car as I could. One huge benefit of the Mapple that I did not anticipate was that I learned a lot of new Japanese because navigating a foreign land using maps written in a foreign language required continuous study, reinforced with self-guided adventures. Frequently, I asked friends and strangers how to get to different places and had them show me on the map, which I would mark up writing English and Japanese notes on the page and charting my course with pens and markers. I depended on my basic Japanese-English paper dictionary ($20.00) at first, and then upgraded to a Canon Wordtank (50,000 yen) electronic dictionary to fastidiously decipher novel kanji in the Mapple and on the road signs. I marked many notable finds in that book when afield, and used many of those notes to reference on this blog.
When my two years were up, I gave this precious tome away to a friend, not thinking twice about lightening my load. It didn’t occur to me that I would want this memento at the time, and most likely she got rid of it soon after, as it was a bit outdated. Of all the books that I had to leave behind (sadly, I had a large collection of books that I couldn’t bring back to the US), that Super Mapple is the one I miss the most because it contained so many memories that are now largely inaccessible. In this age when paper is relegated to a much slimmer niche for information management, it’s not generally web-based mediums (this blog being the main exception) that hold such vivid memories of going places, meeting people and doing cool things – it’s the stuff I can touch, leaf through, sift, sort and put into boxes that act as the strongest portals to the past. It’s the feel, smell, stains, and patina that exude minute details of experiences lived.
I’m grateful I have had the opportunity to only know paper maps growing up, and that I developed proficiency using maps, atlases, charts, etc. For me, nothing digital can match the feeling that paper imparts. Leafing through pages, writing and marking with different implements, tearing and abusing pages, bending the spine to frequently accessed regions, and being able to have a physical object to interact with and allow others to access without worry are things that digital products just can’t come close to fulfilling. I love modern map apps for convenience and for accessing collective intelligence, but they do lack much of the magic of the paper experience.