What you have to do is activate Japanese language input and type the word with roman characters with it set so that it converts to Hiragana. Often that might be enough.

In this case the search required the kanji for kan, so it's hopeless if you don't know what the kanji is supposed to be. Also you would need to fight with the software because it will try to convert ike to the kanji for "pond" whereas in this case it's written in hiragana. But of course you wouldn't know that.

The only time that things come up in roman characters on google maps is if the place has a website that reads those characters or non-Japanese have reviewed it. The danger with latter is that it might guide you to the wrong location because the foreign reviewer has the wrong address.

I am not sure what ikekan means in this context. "Can go with intuition"? I think the default from the keyboard input is going to be "pond interval".....