I'm wondering. How come there isn't a single app or service that offers *true* offline navigation in Japan? I'll be going there for a month in October, and I'll probably need it. It would be much better than paper maps...
I mean really, Japan is the third whealthiest country in the world, and not a single company sells offline navigation maps for it? It's unthinkable, and you know what, it's simply not true. I've been in Japan before in every single electronics "depaato" (department store) is riddled with "navi" devices. Every last one of them containing Japan maps featuring incredible detail.
I'm sure Japan also has it's share of Android phones, and given Android's age, it would be pretty much inevitable that there would be an app with detailed Japan maps? Anyone? It simply has to exist, somewhere.
The things I've tried:
1) Google Maps 5 - it's not offline, it just copes with failing internet connections a little better. It's nowhere *near* being truly offline.
2) MapDroid - no navigation per se, but it's maps are horrendous. Last time I checked ALL of Japan is 26MB, while The Netherlands, a much smaller country is over 200MB. No details, and almost everything that is truly handy (such as small roads, and names of everything - things that aren't visible on paper maps) is all open space.
3) I've tried building custom maps with one of those tools that grab tiles from Google, but it amounts to many GB's of data, because the data is... well, tiles. No vectors. And no metadata such as POI's and names of dori/blocks/districts.
So, I'm at a loss. Please help
I mean really, Japan is the third whealthiest country in the world, and not a single company sells offline navigation maps for it? It's unthinkable, and you know what, it's simply not true. I've been in Japan before in every single electronics "depaato" (department store) is riddled with "navi" devices. Every last one of them containing Japan maps featuring incredible detail.
I'm sure Japan also has it's share of Android phones, and given Android's age, it would be pretty much inevitable that there would be an app with detailed Japan maps? Anyone? It simply has to exist, somewhere.
The things I've tried:
1) Google Maps 5 - it's not offline, it just copes with failing internet connections a little better. It's nowhere *near* being truly offline.
2) MapDroid - no navigation per se, but it's maps are horrendous. Last time I checked ALL of Japan is 26MB, while The Netherlands, a much smaller country is over 200MB. No details, and almost everything that is truly handy (such as small roads, and names of everything - things that aren't visible on paper maps) is all open space.
3) I've tried building custom maps with one of those tools that grab tiles from Google, but it amounts to many GB's of data, because the data is... well, tiles. No vectors. And no metadata such as POI's and names of dori/blocks/districts.
So, I'm at a loss. Please help