What is on the map of Japan
KUON MAP carries 28 layers, and 16 of them are built for Japan. Measured elevation you can tilt into 3D anywhere in the country, the weather agency's flood and landslide warnings, snow depth, lightning, bear sightings, how far you are from a hospital. No account and no app. Open the map and stack the layers you want.
Here is what each one shows, and whose numbers they are.
Terrain, measuredWeather and hazardsRecords kept close to daily lifeHow people are distributed
Terrain, measured
Elevation as it was surveyed. Nothing estimated, nothing generated.
🗻Terrain
A shaded relief map. Land you think of as flat turns out to have shape.
Geospatial Information Authority of Japan
🧊3D terrain
Tilt the map anywhere in Japan and the ground stands up. It becomes obvious why a river runs where it runs, and why a road bends where it bends.
Geospatial Information Authority of Japan
Weather and hazards
What the Japan Meteorological Agency publishes, in a form you can lay over the other layers. Decisions about evacuation belong to your local authority and the agency. This is a place to look and compare.
🌊Flood risk
River flooding risk shown in colour. Looking at a whole basin at once tells you whether the danger is rising from upstream or downstream.
Japan Meteorological Agency
⛰Landslide risk
Landslide risk. Stack it on the terrain layer and you can read why it is that particular slope.
Japan Meteorological Agency
💧Surface water risk
Where short, heavy rain is likely to pool on roads and low ground.
Japan Meteorological Agency
⚡Lightning
Lightning activity, forecast an hour ahead and updated every ten minutes.
Japan Meteorological Agency
🌀Tornado likelihood
Where sudden gusts are likely. A layer to check before outdoor work or a flight.
Japan Meteorological Agency
❄Snow depth
How deep the lying snow is. In Hokkaido and along the Sea of Japan it changes sharply with altitude inside a single town.
Japan Meteorological Agency
🌫Asian dust
Forecast dust carried from the continent. Worth a look before a day of outdoor photography or optical observation.
Japan Meteorological Agency
Records kept close to daily life
Collected every day and kept before they disappear. Public records get overwritten when they are revised, and last year's picture stops being reachable. These layers exist only because someone kept taking them.
🐻Bear sightings
Bear sightings in Sapporo recorded with coordinates since 2017, currently 1,536 of them. You can read the count per year, the spread across wards, and which months carry the weight. The wards near the mountains and the city centre behave very differently. This is not a map for alarm; it is a map for checking calmly when and roughly where things were recorded.
City of Sapporo (CC BY 4.0) and the Ministry of the Environment
🚏Bus stops
Bus stops nationwide. Stack them with medical reach and ageing, and you can see which places are out of reach without a vehicle.
National Land Numerical Information
⚠Fatal crashes
Where road collisions that killed someone happened. Junctions and stretches with several of them often share something in the terrain or the sightlines.
National Police Agency
How people are distributed
Built from the census and public records. Statistical tables are hard work to read; on a map you see it at once.
👵Ageing and living alone
The share of older residents and the share of single-person households. Meant to be stacked with medical reach and bus stops.
Population Census of Japan
🏥Hospitals and clinics
Where they are.
National Land Numerical Information
🚑Medical reach
How long it takes to reach care, drawn as an area. Not a straight-line radius: it follows roads you can actually drive. In mountain country a place can look close and still take a long time.
Computed from National Land Numerical Information
🏙Densely inhabited districts
Where population is concentrated. The real edge between town and country sits somewhere other than the administrative boundary.
Population Census of Japan
Layers that work anywhere
The same map also carries layers that are not about Japan: weather, live cameras, earthquakes, visible satellites, aurora, RTK base stations, radio interference, seabed terrain, isobaths, seabed relief, sea surface temperature and marine heatwaves. Earthquakes refresh every five minutes, so the map answers the question people usually ask, which is what is happening now. /stations/country
Try it on the map
Every layer comes from public data published by a public body. The conditions for reuse are set out layer by layer on the Japan open data page. Decisions about evacuation and personal safety belong to your local authority and the Japan Meteorological Agency.