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Recognizing locations in the "Rest of Asia" in GeoGuessr hinges on details like Japan's yellow license plates, boxy cars, and blue directional signs with white text; South Korea's unique utility poles, triangular road signs, and language featuring circles; Hong Kong's bilingual signs and distinctive taxis; Taiwan's green signs with flower-shaped freeway numbers; Mongolia's camping equipment under Street View cars; and Kyrgyzstan's red-striped plates and car reflection percentage in mirrors. Look for specific language characters to distinguish between Chinese, Japanese, and Korean writing.

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Rest of Asia Metas

Hong Kong is easily recognizable due to its many skyscrapers along the large bay of water, combined with its many Chinese language signs.

Coverage 🇭🇰 Hong Kong

In south-western Kyrgyzstan, around the city of Osh, if you look in the left side-view mirror, you will see approximately 90% of the Kyrgyzstan silver car being reflected. In the remainder of Kyrgyzstan, you will only see approximately 60% of the Kyrgyzstan silver car being reflected.

Google Car 🇰🇬 Kyrgyzstan

The second variant of the Mongolian Street View car is the visible bars along with the red side view mirrors.

Google Car 🇲🇳 Mongolia

There is a simple meta that can typically inform you of whether you are in the western or eastern half of Mongolia. If the bars are filled in with black, rubber, you should be in Western Mongolia (or Ulan Bataar). If the bars aren’t filled in with black rubber, then you should be in the eastern half of Mongolia.

Google Car 🇲🇳 Mongolia

Kyrgyzstan has the bars under the car visible as well as black/white side mirrors.

Google Car 🇰🇬 Kyrgyzstan

This ‘camping equipment’ look is often found under the Street View car in Mongolia along with the bars.

Google Car 🇲🇳 Mongolia

The key aspect distinguishing Korean from other East Asian written languages is their usage of circles for instance 요 and 안. Other than the idiosyncratic circles, Korean looks quite blocky and rigid in its writing.

Language 🇰🇷 South Korea

This language is spoken in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and China. Chinese tends to have more complicated characters than Japanese and Korean. Chinese characters tend to be made up of more strokes than Japanese. For example, 麼 and 名.

Language 🇨🇳 China

Japanese is different in that is uses many simple curved strokes that make up their characters such as ノ, シ, い and く.

Language 🇯🇵 Japan

This language is spoken in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and China. Chinese tends to have more complicated characters than Japanese and Korean. Chinese characters tend to be made up of more strokes than Japanese. For example, 麼 and 名.

Language 🇹🇼 Taiwan

This language is spoken in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and China. Chinese tends to have more complicated characters than Japanese and Korean. Chinese characters tend to be made up of more strokes than Japanese. For example, 麼 and 名.

Language 🇭🇰 Hong Kong

Japan often has yellow plates.

License Plate 🇯🇵 Japan

Hong Kong license plates are almost square shaped. They have yellow rear plates and white front plates.

License Plate 🇭🇰 Hong Kong

Kyrgyzstan plates typically have a red vertical stripe on the left side of the plate.

License Plate 🇰🇬 Kyrgyzstan

The front and back view of Japanese bollards.

Bollards 🇯🇵 Japan

Japanese directional signs are blue with white lettering.

Street Sign 🇯🇵 Japan

Green signs with white lettering provide highway information in South Korea. The expressway shields used by South Korea look similar to US Interstate shields. Expressway numbers are shown on the map in South Korea however you need to zoom in significantly to see them.

Street Sign 🇰🇷 South Korea

Directional signs in Taiwan are green with white lettering. The major National Freeways are numbered in a white shape that resembles a flower. Taiwanese signs either feature Mandarin and English or just Mandarin.

Street Sign 🇹🇼 Taiwan

A scene from bustling Hong Kong. The major Hong Kong roads are denoted by a yellow shield enclosing a number.

Street Sign 🇭🇰 Hong Kong

Japan uses the yellow coloured, diamond-shaped warning signs that are common in North and South America as well as Australia and New Zealand.

Street Sign 🇯🇵 Japan

The red and white striped arrow pointing downwards indicates that you are in Japan, most likely on the northern island of Hokkaido or possibly on the main island of Honshu, near mountains.

Street Sign 🇯🇵 Japan

Hong Kong’s signs often feature both English and Traditional Chinese.

Street Sign 🇭🇰 Hong Kong

South Korea and Vietnam are the only Asian countries to use warning signs featuring a triangle with a red border and yellow fill.

Street Sign 🇰🇷 South Korea

In Taiwan, utility poles are a common sight. They are cylindrical and often have their lower section adorned with diagonal black and yellow stripes extending all the way to the ground.

Poles 🇹🇼 Taiwan

Many utility poles in South Korea feature diagonal yellow and black stripes that do not extend all the way to the ground..

Poles 🇰🇷 South Korea

In Japan, many poles are characterized by unique vertical yellow and black stripes.

Poles 🇯🇵 Japan

The best way to region guess in Japan is to look at the small plates that are affixed to the utility poles. These plates have different design based on the region in Japan.

Poles 🇯🇵 Japan

South Korean utility poles stand out as they mainly have what resembles a long, sharp, pointed spike extending upwards from the top of the main pole.

Poles 🇰🇷 South Korea

One of the most distinctive features of the island of Jeju, which belongs to South Korea and lies off its south coast, is the rock walls.

Other 🇰🇷 South Korea

A large number of Taiwanese utility poles feature a blue rectangle above the stripes. The bottom half of the blue rectangle should contain two rows of letter and number combinations. We are only concerned with the first letter in the first row- in the above image, this is a ‘K’. This letter alone can tell us fairly accurately where in Taiwan we are located. The map explains how to use this letter.

Other 🇹🇼 Taiwan

Most Japanese cars have a boxy shape.

Cars 🇯🇵 Japan

Hong Kong has a large number of these green and red taxis. You won’t have to travel too far before seeing one.

Cars 🇭🇰 Hong Kong

Japan’s northern most island- Hokkaido (and sometimes northern Honshu) house this unique cabbage looking vegetation.

Flora 🇯🇵 Japan