[jasonbvr]

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.