The Japanese system is better for finding a place on a map. If someone says, "3211 Birch St., Hickton" that could be anywhere in the city. If they say, "Hickton, West-区, Birch-町 3-2-11" you know to first look for the western part, then find the Birch area, then neighborhood 3, block 2, house 11.
Anyway, GPS makes the whole issue moot. Use your damn iPhone!
Even the the Japanese will readily admit that the Japanese system is a nightmare. Because elements are either named arbitrarily (the name of the town, or prefecture, or area, or whatever) or are named in the order they were established (district 9, or block 4, or house 2) finding them is essentially a hash lookup at every level.
"Sure", you say, "but streets are also arbitrarily named". Occasionally true. But there are many fewer of them than there are of blocks or buildings. Streets are long. If I say I need to get to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, a taxi driver in DC knows exactly where Pennsylvania Avenue is -- or only needs to look up that one name -- and can go right there. If I say I need to get to 3-14-13, Higashi-gotanda, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo 141 Japan, then the taxi driver starts pulling out his street atlas. Okay I know where Shinagawa-ku is. Next, where's Gotanda, okay. Where's Higashi, district 13? Okay. Where's block 14? Building 3? Now, how do I get there? That's a lot of lookups, every one of which is randomized.
The opposite of this hideous mess is how things are laid out in, of all places,
Utah. Mormon settlements were laid out intelligently on a grid. The axes of the grid are the only streets with names --well, in the original plan anyway -- (In Salt Lake City it's State Street and South Temple Street). The remaining streets are named for the tick location on the grid on which they reside. Heading west from the origin, we have 100 West, 200 West, 300 West, etc. Heading south from the origin, we have 100 South, 200 South, 300 South, etc. Your address is also a number: if you're on 200 South, and your house is, say, a quarter of the way between 200 West and 300 West, then your address is 225 West 200 South. In a design like this you don't even need a map.
Back in the day, Kyoto was laid out like SLC in order to copy the Chinese capital. Nowadays, they still have Number-jo, but it’s not as all encompassing.
Anyway, GPS makes the whole issue moot. Use your damn iPhone!