Standard Japanese isn’t phonemically challenging on the same level as any kind of Chinese. Japanese has some phonemes that technically don’t exist in (say) English, but the closest equivalents serve the purpose well enough, e.g. [f] for [ɸ], hence romaji “f”.
In Mandarin, you’ve got more vowels than you can fit in the Roman alphabet, you’ve got phonemes that cause confusion even for native speakers (/s/ vs. /sh/ and so on), and of course you’ve got tones, and you’ve got more homophones than anyone can keep track of. And you’ve got multiple romanizations, and even the archaic ones are still influential (Peking and all that), whereas that’s rarely an issue for Japanese. So I really don’t blame tourists for struggling more with Chinese maps than with Japanese ones.
As a general rule, in the 21st century, local economies need global connectivity in order to thrive.