Stay cool – you’re not lost

THE JAPAN Map Centre doesn’t want its disused paper charts simply discarded now that technology has rendered them all but obsolete – so it’s turned them into handheld fans.
The folding fans made from old maps made have become enormously popular, sales fuelled by social media. Several editions have sold out since they first appeared in May.
The Map Centre is an incorporated foundation based in Tokyo’s Meguro Ward that prints and sells topographical maps for the country’s Geospatial Information Authority. 
They’re constantly updated to note changes in elevation and other information and sold wholesale to bookstores. 
The centre also sells aerial photographs, does research on its maps and educates the public.
But modern gadgetry has left the centre with an enormous stock of old paper maps. Then someone had a bright idea – turn the maps into fans.
The employee in charge of the project says 1:25,000-scale maps were scoured for landmarks that would be evident when the paper was folded to make a fan. Nine different well-known places were selected.

Japanese keep cool and figure out where they are with fans made from old topographical maps./Yomiuri Shimbun

Shikoku Dansen, a fan-maker based in Marugame in Kagawa Prefecture, was contracted to produce 1,000 fans.
The Kanazawa fan shows Kanazawa Station and Kenrokuen Garden. A western Tokyo fan is centred on Shinjuku Station and was arranged to show the Diet building and Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden.
Sales were immediately brisk at a price tag equivalent to Bt238.
“It’s not like we had a big advertising campaign,” says a surprised Hiroyuki Inoue of the Map Centre’s production department. “We realised there are a lot of people who can enjoy maps in unconventional ways.”
Six varieties, including the popular Mount Hotaka fan, are slated to go on sale later this month. Fans featuring Mount Norikura and Yonagunijima Island have now been added to the line-up.