Where the streets have no name....

Addresses in Japan are determined on a first come first served basis.



Addresses in Japan are determined on a first come first served basis. Within any particular town, village or ward, numbers are assigned to each plot of land in the order in which they are registered. If a plot is subdivided, each subdivision is given a new number which is an extension of the existing number.


For example, "Fujimi" is a common name for towns or wards ("Cho") in the Kanto region around Tokyo, because it means "overlooked by Mount Fuji" or "view of Mt. Fuji", which can be seen from most of the Kanto Plain, buildings and smog permitting. If Fujimi Cho consisted of, for example, 5 large lots, these would be numbered 1 to 5. If these lots were broken up into smaller lots, the numbers would be "Fujimi Cho 1 - 1", "Fujimi Cho 1 - 2" and so on.


Thus addresses in Japan have their basis in the order of development of the property, and not in any geographical, or other logically derived system.

For this reason it is hard to find your way around in Japan if you don't already have a map, or a reasonably good idea of where you are going. Many facets of living in Japan are like this. In the course of living here for fifteen years I have learned a lot, through a metaphorical mixture of going down blind alleys, getting lost and then retracing my steps, asking directions when someone was around who knew the locality, or just plain guessing when there wasn't. This is the story of how I got to where I am today, as best I remember it, and what I have learned along the way.


As Jack Kerouac said; "and the things that were to come are too fantastic not to tell."


Read On...


If you dropped in by accident, the story starts  here;



Copyright (C) 1997-2011 A.Keyes All Rights Reserved.

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