Maps & Addresses

I'm fascinated by the address system in Japan. I'm sure there's a technical term to describe it better, but it's a hierarchical numbering system. A typical address might be:

1-11-2 Ginza, Chuo-ku
Tokyo, Japan

From the top level down, the address is:

Country: Japan
Prefecture: Tokyo
Ward (ku): Chuo

The numbers narrow the location even more. The ward might have a few neighborhoods with several subsections, each subsection might be broken down into several city blocks, and finally the last number would represent the building number.

1-11-2 Ginza would break down like this:

Ginza - Neighborhood, divided into Chome
1 - Chome. In Tokyo, the first division of the neighborhood is called Chome.
11 - City block
2 - Building number

Given the address and a detailed map, you can get pretty dang close to where you're going. At least, that was my experience. Before I went to Japan, I had the hotel locations identified and circled on my Tokyo map. It made finding them easy. I felt like I was on a treasure hunt. One thing to note, if you don't have a good enough map, you're going to have to ask directions because the building numbers are in no particular order.

I love maps, Japanese people seem to love maps - I'm convinced we have this in common. Since the address numbering can be inconsistant, they seem to used maps a lot. Personally, I love using them, so this isn't a problem for me.