Local spatial interaction between neighborhood land-use categories (i.e. neighborhood interaction) is an important factor which affects urban land-use change patterns. Therefore, it is a key component in cellular automata (CA)-based urban geosimulation models towards the simulation and forecast of urban land-use changes. Purpose of this paper is to interpret the similarities and differences of the characteristics of neighborhood interaction in urban land-use changes of different metropolitan areas in Japan for providing empirical materials to understand the mechanism of urban land-use changes and construct urban geosimulation models. Characteristics of neighborhood interaction in urban land-use changes of three metropolitan areas in Japan, i.e. Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya, were compared using such aids as the neighborhood interaction model and similarity measure function. As a result, urban land-use in the three metropolitan areas was found to have had similar structure and patterns during the study period. Characteristics of neighborhood interaction in urban land-use changes are quite different from land-use categories, meaning that the mechanism of urban land-use changes comparatively differs among land-use categories. Characteristics of neighborhood interaction reveal the effect of spatial autocorrelation in the spatial process of urban land-use changes in the three metropolitan areas, which correspond with the characteristics of agglomeration of urban land-use allocation in Japan. Neighborhood interaction amidst urban land-use changes between the three metropolitan areas generally showed similar characteristics. The regressed neighborhood interaction coefficients in the models may represent the general characteristics of neighborhood effect on urban land-use changes in the cities of Japan. The results provide very significant materials for exploring the mechanism of urban land-use changes and the construction of universal urban geosimulation models which may be applied to any city in Japan.