Originally Posted by rjh

Not exactly answering what you asked, but there are some methods of finding locations, if that's your goal:
--do a search on the google map page, including the city in romanji and [JP | Japan]. Many times this will bring up a previous placemark, though it's not always accurate, it may be close
--here's a link to instructions on how to locate a Japanese address on Google Maps
with a shortcut method near the top of the instructions.