Confused about Japan's Geography!!!!
 

Whenever people talk about Japan, they talk about cities and prefectures and such and I find it all bewildering. Can anyone explain their system, offer resources about it and suggestions on good places to consider traveling or living?

Don't worry too much about it because even after 4 years of college and almost a year of living here, I can't remember them all. First learn the names of the major islands and where the big cities like Tokyo, Sapporo, Kyoto, Osaka, Nagoya, Nagasaki and Hiroshima are. As far as prefectures, I mostly only know the ones that A) contain those big cities or B) are good for snowboarding.

I am fairly certain that the Google Earth program dispays Japan in English whereas the Google Maps online does it in Japanese. The best atlas for its size is Japan Atlas: A Bilingual Guide published by Kodansha International. This is great because it shows English and Kanji. But even though I have the book I still just google things like "map matsumoto nagano" under the images section and see what I can find.

Oh yeah, when living in Japan you should really make an effort to learn regions like Kanto, Kansai, Tohoku, etcetera. Outside Japan it makes little difference if you know them unless you happen to be studying Japanese.

Japan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Scroll down to the section called "Administrative Divisions"