Hm, in Final Fantasy, you could at least save at any time when you were on the world map. You sure that there isn't something like that in Lost Odyssey? It was pretty much standard for Square games.
But an hour between save points isn't even that horrible in terms of these games. It sucks; you can't really play them for 30 minutes at a time in most cases, but I see it already got you since you got drawn back in already.
That's the duality of Japanese RPG's...