Can't locate addresses in Japan
 

Good morning,

I would greatly appreciate if someone directs me an English-speaking website similar to Mapquest.Com or Yahoo Map for Japanese cities – namely Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and Hiroshima. My wife and I are looking for hotels in Japan for an 8-day trip in July. We study dozens of possible hotels, but we can’t locate the hotels’ streets (and often even the neighborhoods) on any of two Tokyo maps that we have. Gets pretty frustrating…

Any advice on how to handle this is appreciated. Thank you in advance.

Street addresses are tough in Japan - even when I've had an address and have been wandering around the general area asking locals for help, I haven't had much success. I don't know about a map site, but I've found http://japan-hotelguide.com/index.htm?GVN to be helpful...also check out http://www.japan-guide.com/. Good luck!

Although it has been several years since we were in Japan, I seem to recall that their house numbering system is chaotic because the houses (and other structures) are numbered in the order in which they were built. Is this still true today? I have no idea.

The address system in Japan is done by blocks of land not by streets. Many streets don't have names. My address is Nomachi 3-2-13. Next door is Nomachi 3-2-14. Across the street is Nomachi 3-2-10. Up the hill and on a different street is Nomachi 3-2-14. The streets and their names (or lack thereof) play no part at all in an address.

To see hotel locations, you can look in a guidebook map. Those maps are usually simple enough to understand, and guidebooks group the hotels by location. The hotel's website will always have a map as well which are simple and easy to understand.

If you can find the hotels' websites, they almost always have a map there, as even the japanese need to see the map to find anything.