Re:Japanese addresses: No street names. Block numbers
by moufestaphio on Friday November 03, 2017 @09:52AM
(#15619210)
Yeah, used to live in Japan and it was quite annoying.
The 'building number' having no relation to location is fairly useless. I generally had to explain through landmarks/obvious buildings where I wanted to go.
The whole system is pretty useless for giving directions.
It's better now with Smart phones (wasn't a thing when I first moved there), but still bad. Korea uses the same system afaik.
Re:Japanese addresses: No street names. Block numbers
by bihnkim on Friday November 03, 2017 @11:30AM
(#15619918)
Last I checked Korea is migrating to a system that resembles American addresses, but both systems are currently valid.
Re:Japanese addresses: No street names. Block numbers
by yongjik on Friday November 03, 2017 @04:35PM
(#15622032)
Ironically, most Koreans I've seen hate the new (America-like) street number system. The problem is that these streets are either (1) really long (say, five kilometers, which covers a lot in a dense city) or (2) one of the several hundred small lanes that branches off these long roads, all named like "XXX street 138-lane"
In the previous system, at least the address tells you which township ("dong") it belongs to, which is usually a walkable distance. (So, for example, you'd have a pretty good idea which subway station to use.) In the new system, it could be anywhere along a busy street running through several districts.
I don't mean the blog post; I mean Japanese addresses are stupid.
From any perspective other than maybe obfuscation, and confusing invaders 400 years ago, they are idiotic. Every country in the EU and North America has a better address system.
There are more reasons than this why this is dumb, but let me list a few I've encountered personally:
1.) Blocks can be fucking BIG. You can take a taxi to Mouyameroyo 1-3 (the block number) and still have no idea where you are, have to just choose to walk around it to the left or to the right, and if you choose wrong, and its a big block, you will walk a kilometer or more. (In my case, the place I was looking for was a children's hospital for a child with a high fever. I mean of course right? When else would it happen.)
2.) There is no way to refer to a block that doesn't exist yet. You can't infer any hypothetical address range based on what comes before or after it. Blocks don't get numbered in any sane order. You can try, as the builders of my apartment did, to guess. But you might be wrong, as they were, and then all the documents have to change.
I love Japan. My kids are dual-citizens and I chose to mostly raise them here. But some things about it are just super-dumb, and this is one.
(Don't even get me started on the date system, used to this day on many important documents including virtually all financial documents, which is based on when the current emperor dies. It's the year Heisei 29 right now. There is no way to accurately refer to dates in the future, because we don't know when the current emperor will die. (Or, as he hopes and deserves to, abdicate. I assume that will affect this kind of date system also.)