Know Your Evacuation Shelter and Hazard Map in Japan Before Disaster Strikes

Quick answer

Hi, I'm Miya, and this is the quiet, unglamorous task I ask every newcomer to do before anything happens: find out where you would go in an emergency, and agree with your household on where you'd meet. It takes an afternoon, and it turns a scary unknown into a plan. In Japan there are two things to locate — your designated evacuation shelter (指定避難所, hinanjo), where you can shelter and stay, and an evacuation area (避難場所, hinan basho), an open safe space you flee to first. Your own city or ward publishes both for your exact address, and that local source is always the one to trust.

Hinanjo vs. hinan basho: two different places

The names sound similar, so it's worth getting the difference clear before you need it. An evacuation area (避難場所, hinan basho) is an open, safe space — often a park, wide ground, or riverside field — that you move to immediately to get away from a fire, flood, or falling danger. It's a place to be safe in the moment, not a place to live.

A designated evacuation shelter (指定避難所, hinanjo) is a building — usually a local school or community centre — where you can stay for a longer stretch if your home isn't safe to return to. Many places are one or the other, and some serve both roles depending on the disaster. Your city or ward decides which sites cover your neighbourhood, so check their list rather than assuming the nearest big building is the right one.

How to find yours

Start with your own local government. Search for your city or ward name together with the words for hazard map (ハザードマップ) or evacuation site (避難所), and you'll usually reach an official portal that lets you look up sites by address. Many areas also feed into a national hazard-map portal, and there are shelter-finder tools that show the nearest sites on a map.

Then look up from your screen. Near parks, schools, and street corners you'll often see evacuation signs — pictograms with arrows pointing to the nearest safe area or shelter. Walk the route once in daylight so it's familiar, note a couple of alternatives in case one road is blocked, and you've done the part that matters most.

Reading your hazard map

A hazard map shows which risks apply at your specific address, and they're not the same everywhere — the building next door can sit in a different zone. Look for the flood layer (how deep water could reach if a nearby river overflows), the landslide layer (slopes and cliffs marked as caution areas), and, near the coast or on soft ground, the quake and tsunami layers. Reading your own address on each one tells you a lot about whether you'd shelter in place or leave early.

Don't try to interpret it alone if it's unclear — the colours and terms are explained on the same portal, and your ward office can walk you through it. The goal isn't to memorise numbers; it's to know, in plain terms, what your address is exposed to and which direction safety lies.

The family plan: where to meet, how to check in

Decide now where your household will gather if you're apart when something happens, and pick a backup in case the first spot isn't reachable. Agree on which evacuation area you'd head to and roughly how you'd get there. Writing it on paper and keeping a copy in each bag sounds old-fashioned, but it works when screens don't.

Phones often get congested right after a disaster, so plan for that too. Japan has a disaster message board service — the 171 voice dialling service and the web171 online board — where you can leave and read short safety messages when normal calls won't connect. Practise it once as a family so it isn't new to you in the moment, and again, confirm the current details through your local government and the service itself.

Your phone turns the plan into action

Here's the thread running through all of this: hazard maps, shelter-finder tools, and evacuation-advisory alerts are delivered through apps and your phone. When an advisory arrives, you'll want to open the map, confirm your route, and message your family — and that only works if you have a Japanese number and mobile data you can rely on in the moment.

So getting connected is part of being prepared. With Rakuten Mobile you can apply online with your residence card, and if your phone supports eSIM you can often be set up the same day in about fifteen minutes — no need to wait. Check the official page for current conditions before you apply. Do the shelter-and-hazard-map homework this week, keep your phone ready, and the plan becomes something you can actually act on.