Japanese Road Atlas

Ian, just to confirm your opinion, I live in Japan and consider Mapple the best as well. But then, I do not drive here, I use the 1:50,000 maps for hiking.
If you buy a 1:200,000 series, you might want to confirm the maps have latitude/longitude grids, if you use those. Surprisingly, many Japanese maps do not, for example, even Mapple hiking maps of just a few years ago.
I think my local convenience store carries the 1:200k, I'll take a look and update this post with a bump.
You are welcome to stop by for a beer(or soda) when you're in town.

We had the bilingual Shobunsha:

http://www.omnimap.com/catalog/int/japan2.htm#p7

but didn't need to use it much. I think most of the Japanese maps are pretty good and because any decent bookshop in Japan will carry a very wide range of maps, if you can wait until you're in Japan then you can check them out then (the other thing is that unless you've got a good source where you are, I've found that Japanese books and magazines tend to be ludicrously expensive overseas so it's cheaper to buy in-country).

Thanks. A friend in Tokyo will be getting the Mapple for me this weekend, cheaper to buy there and post then to try and get it here.
1:200,000 will be perfect for hitch-hiking and as I hope to go to Japan more then one more time having all of Japan at that scale will be useful.
Brett, you must let me know where you live so I can hopefully fit a detour to your area into my schedule.