Local Transportation in Tokyo
How to Read and Understand a Street Address in Tokyo
Tokyo has a very old and chaotic street-numbering system. Generations ago, the first building in a neighborhood was numbered 1. The second, now perhaps blocks away, was numbered 2. And so on.
Still, building 8 can be next door to building number 137. Even veteran taxi drivers get lost. To modernize the system would be forbiddingly expensive. So offices, restaurants, stores and ordinary householders cope by handing out maps to expected visitors, or sending maps by fax. People taking a taxi hand a map of their destination to the driver, who studies it for long moments before nodding "yes" and putting the cab in gear.
Some say the chaos is a charming relic of the capital's origins as a collection of villages, a confusion compounded from the haphazard way the city was rebuilt, first after it was largely destroyed by a colossal earthquake and fire in 1923 and again by firebombing during World War II.
We will use the address of the JNTO Tourist Information Center(TIC) in Tokyo as an example:
2-10-1 Yurakucho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo
The TIC is in the city of Tokyo, in the ku(ward) of Chiyoda; in the area of Yurakucho; in the No. 2 chome(sub-area), in city block number No. 10 and the number of the building is 1
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(1) Kodansha Tokyo Subway Guide
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