Google Maps Japan

The street map searching feature works for Japan now! Here, for example is the street map of Lucky House where I lived for most of my almost two years in Japan 2002-2004 (My Waseda friend Andrew is now living there). It even shows many of the convenience stores I came to know so well… Unfortunatley the satellite picture for just this particular section is horrible, but since great satellite images of nearby areas are available perhaps this will get better. Of course, lots of similar mapping sites in Japanese but great to see Google add this with its convenient live scrolling feature.

NOTE: In case anyone was wondering, Dokto/Takeshima is not included in the Japan collection of street maps (even islands without roads have their names conveniently labelled) which seems to imply Google is siding with Korea on this one. However, the “Northern Territories” above Hokkaido, which are disputed with Russia, are labeled, though no roads are shown for them. If there emerges any uproar from Japan or Russia regarding this, can you imagine if Google were to try to include China and Taiwan in its global mapping scheme, or any of the many other disputed territories on the planet? UPDATE: I should really add, however, that Google probably just took whatever maps were supplied to them by the (presumably) Japanese company which provided them and thus we shouldn’t read any kind of thought out “google policy” into this. However, I think it serves to show the difficulty in providing maps services with global audiences. We may see the appearance of National Geographic-style “disputed” labels eventually.