The map template is weird to me because it’s so small. If each square is a day’s travel by foot, that means your journeying is happening inside like… a few days’ walk? Is that accurate? That doesn’t map to my expectations, but who knows how I arrived at my expectations.

This is why we made note about how the expectations of Japanese players is 1-4 day’s travel between each village. Keep in mind you aren’t only traveling between villages. You might be moving from a village to some old ruins, then waylaid by some moving caravan of gobroaches that forces you to take the path around the mountain, and suddenly that three hour tour becomes… something more interesting I guess. Or maybe you’re going on a pilgrimage through a series of temples a day or two apart. But yeah, it is on the GM to make the scenario meaningful. (well, it’s also on the players, too, but not as explicitly)

We don’t have GM facing guidance for the maps I think because we (well, the designer really) tried to keep the game simple and accessible to new GMs. I’m sure some people would do better with maps, so this was addressed in a later book.