One episode, Itami is in the throne room. Next episode he´s running around in a city. The episode afterwards he´s driving a jeep towards the dragon. But there never are intersections showing how he got anywhere. It´s like a 4-koma comic strip was turned into an anime.
You are trying to reduce it to that, but it's actually not like that at all, of course he is running around. He's exploring the new world and he's part of the recon squad. He always starts from Alnus Hill, his BOP, and we actually see him driving quite a lot having talks about stuff inside the car and helicopter.