If you ever lived in Japan, you know that Japanese address system is uneasy for people who get used to the western system on which all streets have a name and name+number identify the single location.
In Japan, addresses are rather area name.
Two Giants Yahoo! Japan and Google have been working well with this different system and providing pretty good service to Japanese web users. Out of 4 nationwide map companies (Zenrin, Shoubunsha, Increment P and Alps-sha), Yahoo! Japan helped bankrupted Alps-sha and merged it in April 2008. Google Maps is supported by Zenrin’s data.
However, Kyoto, the thousand-years-old former capital, has yet another different method of address notation besides the official postal address, and that casual ones are used daily and on travel guidebooks.
The newly released Geodosu (“-dosu” is a typical Kyoto dialect suffix) Kyoto Traditional Address Search, now supports both Japanese and English, offers what Yahoo/Google Maps cannot do, search by the addresses which Kyoto people are really using. Kyoto geocoder API is also provided.
The Geodosu project is run by Locazing Inc. and Annai LLC.
