Think like a Japanese tourist

Published 5:18 pm Thursday, August 5, 2010

You step off your plane at Sea-Tac, you got three days in the Puget Sound area, here on business. Your English isn’t so great, but you manage to catch a link train to downtown Seattle and find a decent hotel.

You take in the sights of Pike place on your first day and maybe wander around the waterfront, enjoying the sights and some of the best seafood you’ve had outside Japan. On your second day, after a meeting, you catch a cab to the Seattle center and go to the top of the Space Needle – pretty cool!

On your third, you have a morning engagement, but that afternoon your thoughts start to point toward home. You want to bring something back for your spouse. A client tells you about good shopping in a place called “Bellevue” and you’ve seen some advertisements around town. You decide to go, and you try to find out how to use public transportation to get there.

Let’s see here. 519, 550, 560… I-90… 520…. Hey, that bus says Bellevue on it! Oh no wait, there’s a bunch of numbers before where it says Bellevue… What? there’s 550 different ways to get around here? This sounds complicated and if I get lost its gonna be hard to get help. I’ll just go to Westlake Center. That’s by my hotel. I can find that.

Bellevue needs to be on the light rail map this person sees when they step off the plane at Sea-Tac. One map, one track, one train, one destination.

Everett Phillips, Bellevue