What do you say for "junction" or "fork" in a path in terms of direction?


For junction I know of 交差点 but is that only for traffic junctions or can it be
used generally, say, in a mall when the path splits 3 ways or more in front of
you.




I think it would be called a 分岐点｛ぶんきてん｝. In addition to physical path splits,
it's often used to indicate turning points abstractly (like a turning point in
your life etc).

* * *

EDIT: As [@Flaw](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/users/542/flaw) mentions,
this word may not be the best to describe the situation in casual spoken
language. A more casual way you could express this is 分かれ{わかれ}道{みち}. However,
even though one could describe using both of those words how to navigate to a
**_specific_** location via an intersection/a path split (分岐点/分かれ道を右に行く), it
might be better to be more detailed. For example to express turning right at
the first intersection in a キ shaped intersection (キ-shaped probably isn't a
real word), you might say:

> まっすぐに行って、最初の十字路を右に行く

* * *

Here's an [excerpt from research done by the Japan Tourism
Agency](https://www.mlit.go.jp/common/001284231.pdf): [![enter image
description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SUHh1.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SUHh1.png)

And here are some other usages I found: [![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ji5sF.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ji5sF.png)

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4idmJ.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4idmJ.png)

