Here's a link to the one I used: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/my-maps/id321930101?mt=8

It's by Ruths Research and Design.
There may be better apps out there, but I thought for $1.99 it was worth it to be able to access all of my places on googlemaps info as well as the photos of the front door that I have in the notes for most places.
On a side note, if you can rent a local iPhone 4 with unlimited data for as much as a mifi then I would go for that and you can still use this app or regular old googlemaps. I so wish I were heading there!

iPhone or standalone GPS are not super reliable for walking in the city, especially Tokyo with tall buildings and narrow side streets, as GPS requires line of sight to the sky and mutiple satellites are required for correct positioning.

If you are walking along wide boulevards or crossing parking lots or public parks, then yes it's excellent.

I used google maps (with a local data plan) and MapFan (Japanese standalone GPS app that requires no data) trying to access certain addresses and neither of them is very good. It typically lacks behind by 500m or so.

At least with google maps you can use street view to see the actual neighbourhood or things along the route.

Or just use a map, which works no matter how tall the surrounding buildings are.

Sometimes the low-tech options are best.

Sometimes reading all of the posts in a topic before responding is best.

I use offmaps on my iphone. if you download the map in advance, the gps in your phone should work to locate you without a data plan. it's not perfect as others have pointed out but i found it works pretty well. I almost use the compass feature more than the physical map itself.

sometimes in the maze of small side streets, i just need a general pointing in the right direction to get out onto a bigger street where I can get on the train at a nearby station.

They don't have lists for each residence or business, at least in cities. The people there will know the general area but you'd need an address for anything other than bigger places.

Maps are quite common here but it's important to remember that up can (and usually is) any direction, not north.

I've never used a conventional map before.and not got lost much.most of the places of interest in those cities you mentioned are easy to find. in kyoto, if you go to the info booth in the JR station they give you a bus map and thats all you need. tells you which bus goes where as well as the places of interest on it

If you're looking at a map that's fixed to a wall or a couple of posts in the ground, then the top of the map is usually the direction you're facing to read it. (Even if the map is underground). It must increase the cost of planning and printing street maps ... but the orientation of those maps isn't just random - there is an organizing principle, of sorts.
When it comes to portable, paper, maps ... omst Japanese people do that thing of twisting them round and round until they can see it's pointed the way they're pointing - as if the world needs to align itself with them (or as if it's impossible to imagine a direction other than forwards when looking at a piece of paper). When I see someone doing that with a map, (or worse, a nautical chart), my heart sinks.
Having said that, the old maps of Edo with all the names of the daimyo around the castle legible only when you walk around (or twist the enormous map, god forbid) to that part of the map ... those are pretty cool.

500 m is an exaggeration; a few 10s of meters at best. I use my Google maps on my iphone as a back-up for car navigation without a problem and it works flawlessly all over Tokyo except tunnels. It even seems to work ok when you are on Roppongi dori with the expressway above. There is a slight lag of a fraction of a second but you easily compensate.

Since most tourists are not driving around Tokyo, I am sure they can manage.

The Navi in my car even works below ground in the Yamate tunnel, for example.

I believe that the iPhone GPS will use nearby mobile phone towers as well as GPS satellites to figure out where you are.

And Wifi base stations too, though not to the same level of accuracy as GPS.

Google's Android phones and Sony's PSP PSVita have similar location services through wifi triangulation when GPS is not available. You will need a data connection for it to work.


Factory-installed automotive navigation systems may receive speed and steering input to continue estimate your location when GPS signals are not available. This feature is called dead reckoning. You can also achieve the same result with accelerometers.

What's wrong with doing that? It's just setting the map by eye; it's hardly any different from setting it by compass, which is a standard navigational technique (at least according to my training, and my copy of Mountaincraft and Leadership).

My car has this - it gets confused by certain types of automated parking here in Japan. The worst is the type where you drive your car straight into the machine, onto a pallet. The machine then whisks the pallet up and stores it away. When you retrieve the car, the pallet arrives back turned through 180 degrees so you can drive straight out.

Of course, the whole rotation of the pallet happens when the car is turned off... so the navi thinks you're driving in completely the opposite direction until it manages to get a good GPS fix and reset itself.

I think it's the twisting and turning of the page after reader has already worked out his/her current location and orientation that really stands out as a danger sign. It's as if the person is trying to mentally "walk through" a route and needs to keep turning that page for it to make sense ...

I wouldn't mind if it worked, but it's a strong indicator IME that the person handling the map hasn't a clue. The directions you get from the person are likely to have left and right mixed up after the first turn. The nautical chart story comes from a guy I met who wasn't happy that the chart table on a yacht was facing astern. Claimed it made it hard to think straight. His navigational abilities were *&%$. Purely anecdotal, I know ... but it's something I take as a sign of low spatial intelligence now.

iPhone and google maps was a great combo for me. It allowed me to get off the beaten path to explore and not worry about getting lost or asking anyone. I relied on it a lot. The only problem with google maps is that if you search for something using English the map may be displayed with Japanese characters.

try iphonetrip.com for about $12 per day with unlimited data in Japan. It works even if your phone is locked with AT&T.

Tokyo Teleport Plus for iPhone has offline maps and costs about $10.