Is it fair to say that the Japanese place name is in some way a physical description of the place itself? I know that in the Old World, place names tended to be that way but not to the same extent, and often the meaning of the place name was in an ancient language now in disuse. It appears very few place names in the United States are descriptive of the place.
Although, many U.S. locations retain Indian place names, which if I’m not mistaken are quite descriptive of the locale. Like the Japanese?
Omaha: “town (People) of the large canoes.”
Milwaukee: from an Algonquian word Millioke, meaning “Good”, “Beautiful” and “Pleasant Land”
Iowa: probably from an Indian word meaning “this is the place” or “the Beautiful Land.”
Poughkeepsie: The name derives from a word in the Wappinger language, roughly U-puku-ipi-sing, meaning “the reed-covered lodge by the little-water place,”
Etc.
List of place names of Native American origin in New York
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_place_names_of_Native_American_origin_in_New_York
OK, this is way off topic, but as you can see the workload today is less than usual, so...
I live in central Florida. Towns here are named after people, or are descriptions of the area and/or the climate. Haines City, Plant City, Kathleen, Babson Park, Sebring, Bartow, and Fort Meade are named after people. Winter Haven and Frostproof are named for the climate. Lakeland, Mulberry, Green Pond, Lake Wales, Zephyrhills, and Groveland are all descriptions of the area. There are also two types of names that are somewhat unique to America: Indian names such as Kissimmee, Wauchula, Narcoossee, and Thonotosassa, and names brought from Europe such as Dundee.
There is one other town in the area whose name makes no sense, and I cannot find out how it was named: Medulla. When it was named that in the 1880s the medulla oblongata was still called "the bulb," and in any case "medulla" means "bone marrow," which is an odd name for a town. Incidentally, before it was called Medulla it was called Spring Hill, because it was--you guessed it--on a hill with a spring. That doesn't mean there isn't a Spring Hill in FL, of course; there is one, about 50 miles north of Tampa, except that it isn't on a hill, and doesn't have a spring.
” It appears very few place names in the United States are descriptive of the place.”
IMO, mostly true for cities and towns. Out in the rural areas a lot of places are named for descriptions.