Japanese Addresses
Someone told me yesterday that Japansese addresses do not follow Western address logic. I have found this bit of info from
http://www.japanbiomedical.com/countryinfo_jpn.html but I am still none the wiser, it seems mental.
Concepts
CONCEPTS
It is important to understand that the Japanese system of addresses is organized around quadrants, not streets. Though some large thoroughfares do have names, such as "Ginza-dori" and "Hibiya-dori" and the Japanese people do refer to these streets in a general way, no addresses are based on them. There is no "123 Ginza-dori" and "1-2-3 Ginza" does not refer to No. 123 on Ginza Street. The hierarchical system of street numbers in most Western cities where by "even numbers on are one side and odds on the other" does not exist. This is why you cannot just give an address to a taxi driver and expect him to find it!
This is a source of much frustration for foreigners, who often take taxis and are surprised that handing the driver the complete address will be met with puzzled looks and an inability to find it! One of the most frequently heard complaints about travelling by taxi in Japan (there are few, as Japanese drivers are almost universally scrupulously honest and courteous) is, "I gave him the address - in Japanese no less! - and he still couldn't find it."
This section is designed to give some background which will explain why this is a common occurrence - even for the Japanese! If you don't speak Japanese and can't explain how to get there, it's always best to have a map of where you are going to show the taxi driver. Most businesses have maps which can be faxed or emailed specifically for this purpose.
Street Names
There aren't any.
Well, that's not 100% true, but it's better to say that, to get the point across. Only a few really big streets have names, but this is only for local reference. The most common street name emanating from the central station in many towns is "Oo-dori" which literally means "big street" or "main street." Street names do not exist in addresses. The Japanese addressing system is based on a quadrant system, roughly meaning "blocks" of a neighborhood, not on streets with linear, numeric addresses. In other words, there is no "123 Ginza Dori" designating a specific building on Ginza Dori with the number 123, which would be "up" from 120 and "down" from 129 Ginza Dori.
However, you can find neighborhoods named after a major streets. In these cases, however, it doesn't alter the structure of the addresses - they are still based on the chome-ban-chi system. Foreigners, however, may run across these famous streets and assume it is a street number system and be confused.
Usually, a neighborhood name will probably end in either -cho or -machi. The kanji, however, is the same. The character has two pronunciations (but which one to use is fixed.
In the countryside, the numbering system changes, since there aren't the "quadrant" blocks of the cities. Often an address will end with "mura", which means village. There will frequently be another location name used, usually designating the village section. There will be just one number attached, such as
345 Nakamachi, Naka-cho
There are other variations, but for the casual visitor, with little understanding of Japanese, a treatise on the variations and implications of Japanese addresses would serve to confuse rather than illuminate.
Comments
It's more logical than that - chome-ban-chi is a hierarchical system, but not what people expect. In fact, it's more hierarchical than Western addressing, where everything is pretty much flattened at the street name level. A street name doesn't tell you anything about where in the city you want to be. In fact, it can be downright miseleading when you have a Donegall Street and a Donegall Road and a Donegall Square and they're nowhere near each other.
At least with chome-ban-chi, you can start at Chiyoda-ku, and then find 5-chome, and then look at the maps on the telegraph poles to find 7 ban, then home in on 2-chi. (And you're at the Japanese Go Assocation headquarters.)
And of course there are maps all over the place. Which we don't have here.
Posted by: Simon | June 9, 2003 06:46 PM
Thanks for that, this is somewhat more illuminating. A hierarchial system seems more logical than a purely linear system with no correlation between street names. How do maps work then? Do you look up the chome first then have a grid system pointing to the relevant ban from where you can pin point the chi. If a new building is built (if there is enough room in Japan) how do they renumber the chis?
Posted by: jaffs | June 9, 2003 09:04 PM
Granted, the system is indeed different, but the system used in the US is not identical to the system used say in Australia, either.Japan is not the only country to employ such a system - Korea utilises a similar system. For Tokyo addresses, the three groups of figures refer to chome, banchi, and go. The simplest street directory for Tokyo is divided into the 23 wards, which function like shires or muni cipalities in Australian capital cities, then the cities, villages and so on. Each ward is divided into suburbs, and are coloured, much like looking at a map of the 48 contiguous states of the US. These 'suburbs' or districts are in turn divided into the chome mentioned here. The lower the value of the digit of the chome, the closer it is likely to be to the centre of Tokyo. Indeed, the banchi is the block number, sometimes in a logical order, sometimes not. The go (the 'go' of 'bango' which means number) will, more often than not, be in sequential order with recent reorganisation.
Obviously, using such maps requires the ability to read Japanese, but bilingual maps are available in good bookshops. Plus, with knowledge of Japanese, getting a map for a given address by selecting appropriate criteria from prompts on a website is also possible, which makes it a snap for people with internet access these days.
Posted by: Phillip | October 21, 2003 06:51 AM