
Japanese Addresses: the opposite is also true [video] - stakent
http://sivers.org/jaddr
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rwmj
But getting to places in Japan is still stupidly difficult, even when you have
local knowledge. Street naming is a _better system_ because we walk along
streets, not blocks. Unless you're Godzilla ..

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patio11
That has not been my experience, and my direction sense is nil. The address
system also has not harmed the Japanese distribution industry, which is quite
possibly the most efficient in the world.

(These days all the routing is computerized, but prior to that all routing
made use of the fact that Japanese addresses get progressively more specific.
You used that to sort the parcel at every location so that it got to a
distribution center closer to the destination, at which point one of your
carriers who had worked in that neighborhood for years would get it directly
to the proper door.)

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sorbits
Sounds similar to sorting by zip code.

I don’t know how many postmen share each zip code. In Copenhagen the western
district has been sub-divided into a lot of zip codes so it could be that each
is its own route, but they only did it for the western district, the other
districts still only have a single zip code — I suspect that they did it to
simplify sorting but found that people are more likely to make mistakes (when
you have a dozen zip codes for the colloquially same district).

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ugh
In the German city Mannheim streets also don’t have names, blocks do. Well,
only in the old city center, but still.

Mannheim’s old city center has these regular, almost quadratic blocks (called
„Quadrate“) which are very unusual to find in any European city. If those
regular shaped blocks made Mannheim name its blocks, not streets, why didn’t
the same thing happen in the US (where those kinds of blocks are much more
common) at least once? I think that’s a intriguing question.

[http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Mannheim_Inn...](http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Mannheim_Innenstadt.jpg&filetimestamp=20061013191902)
(Photo)

<http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadratestadt> (sadly, only in German)

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wglb
This is a very nice post showing that sometime you need to go far away to see
what assumptions you are quite unaware that you are holding.

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lisper
Um, I was just in Japan and streets definitely have names. For example, this
is in Nagasaki:

<http://flownet.com/ron/fukken_street.jpg>

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mullr
The street outside my window in Kobe has a name because it's pretty major, but
the two running orthogonal to it on each side of my block don't. This is
typical. IIRC Sapporo has a western style street system, and is laid out on a
grid, but otherwise the video is correct.

Meeting points and directions are generally expressed in terms of landmarks
like train stations.

The system isn't really that strange. We (in america) use the same system of
space decomposition for states, counties, and (in some places) cities. This
just continues breaking it down to city regions (区), district name, chunk of
blocks（丁目), block number, and finally house number. It's consistent with the
larger scale system, and it handles change pretty gracefully.

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BigDamnDeal
So how do you give directions? I know you must have a system, but I'm not sure
exactly how it works. "Head down to Block 16, take a left and turn right at
block 22"?

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ramchip
"Turn right at the next crossing, then at the 4th street turn left, then after
you see the Buddhist temple turn right". Major streets also have a name, and
there are maps at a lot of places, most importantly at the train station.
Around my place there are even detailed, apparently hand-drawn maps with the
shops' names written on them.

In the block themselves there may also be a map of the block with the houses
and the family names of the owners. Houses themselves don't have a number
plaque but they have the owner's name at the entrance. Apartment buildings
tend to have a (more or less pompous) name as well. Here "mansion" means an
apartment :)

Generally you don't need to ask though, since the websites for japanese shops
usually have a detailed map, and people who invite you will give you
landmarks.

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Mz
A couple of completely unrelated thoughts:

Even in America, there isn't necessarily some standard format for giving
directions. If you spend any time around career military folks, they tend to
give directions which include north, south, east and west as a critical part
of the explanation. Many civilians cannot make heads nor tails of such
directions.

I am reminded of an anecdote (probably from Reader's Digest) where an American
man working with a Japanese company was frustrated at his inability to get on
the same page with these folks. One day when things finally seemed to be
getting better, he remarked they were "thinking along parallel lines". The
Japanese man agreed. Some time later when they were again at an impasse, he
referenced that discussion. The Japanese man then replied "Parallel lines
never meet".

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ojbyrne
The conclusion of this was very much in line with my proverb that "every
proverb has an equal and opposite counterpart."

