Even for natives the way Japan’s addressing system works is a mystery. The advantage of Japan’s approach is that it is much easier to give anyone a general idea of where you are, as each 10- to 20-block neighbourhood has a name and clearly defined boundaries. In a way, it is easier in Japan (and Korea as well) to say what part of town you are in. It is much simpler to be able to say, “I live in Hara-Machida 4-chome” than having to say, “Um, I live on 57th and somewhere between Sandy and Halsey, you know, not quite Hollywood District. (How many people actually know this is called Rose City Park district, or where it starts and ends?)” The ease of understanding it ends there, however.
In the older system, each house was identified by its plot number (chiban 地番). This plot number is similar to the “legal description” of a property in the U.S. The number can be incontiguous and often inconsistent. During the 1960s and later, many major cities began reorganizing this into an easier-to-understand block address system.* Called “shin jukyo hyouji 新住居表示,” this system often divided the existing neighbourhoods into smaller sections (for example, previous Yanagi-machi became Yanagi 1- to 5-chome), then each block was given a number (ban), in which each house is given a contiguous house number (go). This way, Yanagi-machi 2105-2 and its next door neighbour Yanagi-machi 2261 would become something like Yanagi 3-chome, 10-ban, 1-go and 2-go (which is usually written in English like “3-10-1 Yanagi” and “3-10-2 Yanagi” respectively). If 3-10-2 Yanagi is an apartment complex, an apartment number is appended. For example, #201 would be 3-10-2-201 Yanagi.
As you may have noticed, everything is written in the order of “from greater to the smaller.” Hence you see something like “6-50-1 Hommachi, Naka, Yokohama, Kanagawa 231-8315 Japan” is actually written out in Japanese like “Yuubin-bango (postal code) 231-8315, Nippon-koku, Kanagawa-ken, Yokohama-shi, Naka-ku, Hommachi 6-chome 50-ban 1-go.” (日本国神奈川県横浜市中区本町６丁目50番1号)
This style of writing out addresses is followed also by Korea (both North and South), Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China (to an extent; they have street address system).
In Korea, an address consists of province (do) or municipality (chik’hal si or teugbyeol si), city (si) or district (gun) - or if in a municipality, ward (gu in South Korea, ku-yeok in North Korea), and then neighbourhood (dong) or in rural areas, township (eup) or village (myeon).
In China (except for Hong Kong and Macau, which follow a Europeanized system of Britain and Portugal), it is also written in the order of the big to small, but sometimes it seems convoluted due to varying administrative structures.
Notes:
On May 10, 1962 a new law called 住居表示に関する法律 (The Law concerning Addressing of Houses), Law 119 of Showa 39, came into effect, in order to reduce confusions caused by repeated subdividing of lands during the period of rapid economic growth post World War II.
Also see: http://arc.uub.jp/arc/arc.cgi?N=459
