>>44718246It makes less sense to look at it as though it has always been very globally connected. Kanto and Johto are immediately adjacent to one another, but people in either region can't have known jack shit about the other region. If Gen 1 and 2 are anything to go by, researchers and the like were in touch by email and telephone, but cell phones weren't common, and home PCs didn't necessarily have internet connections. It could even be that no one, including Oak, had contacts in Johto at the time, but he got connections to people in Johto between generations. Beyond that, it may be that travel between Kanto and Johto is actually pretty fucking hard, given the only points of connection that we've seen; if that were the case, only skilled trainers could manage to do it until they set up the Magnet Train.
