In the past, I’ve spent a lot of time wandering around in foreign countries. Sometimes I know where I’m going, sometimes I don’t. When I arrived in Shibuya, Tokyo and didn’t know where I was going, I did what I oftentimes do in these cases. Which is get in a taxi and let them figure it out for me.

I waved down an empty cab, and the friendly middle-aged man smiled widely. He impressed me by he pressing a button that automatically opened the rear passenger door. After laboriously pulling my baggage and myself into the car, I showed him the English name of the hotel. He repeated the name out loud a few times, transliterating it into Japanese. “Met-sa ho-tel-a.” He repeated it again, elongating each syllables as he sat deep in thought, quietly questioning if he knew the location. “Met-saaa ho-telll-aaaa?”

He pulled forward, asking a traffic controller a few questions in rapid-fire Japanese. After a few minutes, he merged into traffic and we were on our way. Turns out, the hotel was very close, but hard to find. We drove around the block a few times until we found it. I gave him 1250 yen, or about thirteen dollars, and thanked him profusely.

The following day, I set out to find a MUJI store that was fairly close to where I was staying, or so I had gathered from my online research. In the lobby of the hotel, I asked the receptionist to write down the address, so that I could take a taxi there. She seemed surprised that I wanted to take a taxi, and then seemed sorry for her surprise, shyly saying that it was “only maybe 15 minutes by walking.” She gave me a bad map with worse directions, and off I went.

I was lost practically before I even begun, and stopped somebody on the street right outside the hotel. He pointed me in the right direction.

After walking for awhile, I cornered a couple for further help. At this point, I realized I had forgotten to get the receptionist to write MUJI down in Japanese. I tried various pronunciations of the word. “Moooojii? Mewwwjiii,” I mused out loud. Finally, a spark of recognition crossed the couple’s faces, and they said, “Oh! MUJI!” I smiled at my success and nodded emphatically. The man put his hand on his chin, and then asked, “You mean, no name quality goods.” Yes. Exactly what I was looking for.

A few minutes of directional hand-waving later, I was on my way again.

I was told to cross a few intersections, and then turn right at the big intersection. The second or third intersection was fairly large, so I started to wonder if I would know which intersection was the “big intersection.” Then I happened upon what I later learned was called Hachiko Crossing, and realized there was no way I could have missed it.

It was quite possibly the biggest, busiest intersection I ever seen. And unlike China, these people were all waiting patiently. Nobody jaywalked, not even a single person. There wasn’t even jostling at the front lines, but I found a place out of trampling distance anyway, standing rooted to the ground in awe. When the walk light lit up, people poured onto the street.

With a lamp pole at my back, I contemplated what “turn right” even meant. There were no less than five different corners at this intersection. I watched several the lights change several times, before I spotted a gaijin, a foreigner, on my left. I turned to him and asked if he knew where I could find the nearby MUJI.