Japanese addressing system editing memo
needs separation for banti-no-x and chome-ban-gou. cho-iki may be cho-mei? aza is a mistery, xxx-xxxx will show all chomei and oo-aza NOR 13:58, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)
The system, based on areas, starts from the biggest division, prefectures. They are suffixed with to (都, 'capital'), for Tokyo, fu (府, 'urban prefecture') for Osaka and Kyoto, dō (道, 'circuit') for Hokkaidō and ken (県, 'prefecture') for the rest. Conventionally, the cities of Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto are almost always referenced without to or fu, while Hokkaido is always with do; without it, Hokkai means simply 'North Sea'.
Prefectures are then divided into shi (市, 'city') and gun (郡, 'district'). Unlike countries such as the US, cities belong directly to prefectures, while towns and villages are under districts. Big cities are usually divided into ku (区, 'ward') and then divided into chōiki (町域, 'town area') like machi, chō (both written 町, 'town') or just the area name (like Ginza). Smaller cities are divided directly into chōikis. Districts are subdivided into machi and mura (村, 'village') and then into chōiki like aza (字, 'area'). See also Municipality of Japan.
The final three elements of the address are the city district (chōme 丁目), the city block (banchi 番地) and finally the house number (ban 番). As these are all numbers, they are usually simply written as a string, 1-2-3, starting with the chōme and ending in the ban, but in formal chōme is part of the chōiki and should not be omitted. In sparsely populated rural areas, one or more of these may be missing, with some addresses having only the ban. In urban apartment buildings, on the other hand, it is not unusual to add the apartment number as a fourth element.
It is worth noting that street names are not used in postal addresses, and that the numbers in the address are usually assigned by order of construction, meaning that especially in older areas of the city they will not run in linear order.
In addition to the address itself, all locations in Japan have a postal code. After the reform of 1998, this is a seven-digit number written in the format 〒 DDD-DDDD, where the symbol 〒 (yūbin) means 'post code'.
http://www21.ocn.ne.jp/~kobataka/tokyo/chiban.html
http://www.city.hachioji.tokyo.jp/shimin/01_s_soumuka/jyukyo/hyojikku.htm
http://law.e-gov.go.jp/htmldata/S37/S37HO119.html
http://www.biwa.ne.jp/~toda-m/hometown/p7essay.html
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