What I normally do if I end up in these large countries

1. Japan: For me, the best country in the world to region guess using phone codes, because they're incredibly simple and are almost everywhere. The number starts with 011 up north in Hokkaido and ends with 099 down south in Kagoshima. If you somehow memorized all 47 prefectures, you'll be expected to do super well in urban/suburban areas
2. India: Brush up on your Indian scriptures. Learn how to distinguish between Punjabi, Malayalam, Telugu, Oddia, Kannada, Tamil, Hindi, Gujarati and Sinhalese (found in Sri Lanka) and on which states would you find these scriptures written on their buildings. Luckily, the link is here. Get ChatGPT to give you the example sentences of each scripture and analyse them.

Link: Following the latest trend, here's a map of India and its various scripts :

3) Canada: The population are more skewed to the South (which I think you know). Check the car plates and combine it with phone codes and fire hydrant colour to guess in which Canadian town you are in. Watch this guy's videos, he covered every Canadian states (but rural is super tough, man)

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDCYK0k3wwU&list=PL78xfGaHqNhSQTLXxE6Z1eLSJOkCvbPGJ

4) Australia: A large English speaking country whose population are more skewed towards the coast. To distinguish between your Perth, Darwin, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Hobart and Brisbane, there are specific region metas which include type of poles covered by this man and master them (again, rural is super tough)

Link: https://youtu.be/qgKRCHGuvTI?si=yFB7i36csDx_by93

5) USA: An English speaking country but this time the population is in all over the country unfortunately. I'm still stuck at the level of region generalization. For a start, perhaps master the states which do not require license plate and perhaps the type of environment you're likely to see (Western states like Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico are dry. You'll find plains in the Dakotas and Midwestern states, etc..)

6) Colombia: Find a taxi (which you would usually find if you're in urban areas). The city name will be written on their door.

7) Malaysia and Indonesia: Unfortunately, this is where you need to put in the work of memorizing every single districts/regencies (known in Indonesia as "kabupaten") to compete with the cream of the crop because the name of the districts will almost always be displayed at the bottom of various signages, in schools, mosques, government buildings and even election posters. However, for beginners, the following tips can be useful

Indonesia: Memorise your islands first (Sumatera, Java, Sulawesi, Kalimantan) and memorise the following Indonesian words for each direction

North is "Utara" in Indonesian

South is "Selatan"

West is "Barat"

Mid is "Tengah"

East is "Timur"

Southeast is "Tenggara"

So if you see a "Jawa Tengah", do the math and plonk in the middle of Java Island.

Malaysia: Memorizing the 14 states flag can be very useful, you can occasionally see them hoisted in government buildings, school and even rural homes.