Comments on: Mapping Japan in English

By: Cailin Coilleach

Cailin Coilleach — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 11:12:46 +0000

i’ve also found that it helps a lot to just map things out for yourself beforehand. Websites such as Google Maps make it very easy to find an address or location on the web. From there it’s trivial to map out your route to/from the nearest station. On my first trip to Japan I went so far as to draw an outline of the various train routes I needed to take, followed by a sketch of the surrounding area.

By: Billy

Billy — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 01:42:53 +0000

No big deal, the numbers were mixed up. We get the point though – addresses in Japan are very confusing. Nice post!

By: Shane Sakata

Shane Sakata — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 01:57:50 +0000

@Jenn I don’t get lost very often at all – a little disoriented at times though but I’m sure that’s the case with pretty much everyone navigating an area that is unfamiliar. The tools I mentioned help a lot when heading out to different places though and save you from trying to decide which format the address is in. I have never really relied much on addresses when navigating the city – primarily maps and directions from friends citing landmarks.

Thank you for the link to Wikipedia – it just confirms that the address system is confusing don’t you think? I will take a detailed read through the article and adjust this one so as to not confuse people even more.

By: Jenn

Jenn — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:02:10 +0000

Just wondering if you get lost a lot. When all three numbers are used without specifying the chome, the chome number is first. For instance, if the address you listed above were written 3-6 Kameido, 4 Chome
Koto-ku, Tokyo 136-0071, you would be correct. But when it’s written 3-6-4 Kameido, 3 is the chome number. Wiki and my own experience in Tokyo support my opinion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_addressing_system

By: jo

jo — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:16:55 +0000

your example address, in japanese, would read:
東京都江東区亀戸３丁目６番地４号（the last part is commonly written simply as３−６−４）right?
in which case, “kameido 3″ is the neighborhood chome/district, 6 the city block and 4 the building number…

also, as a side note, i’ve found that regardless of the order you write the address (japanese style, city down, or american style, street up) as long as all the numbers are somewhere on the envelope, it gets there. a little thank you to the japanese postal workers.