4 ms·

Japanese addresses: No street names. Block numbers (2009)

114 points by rmason 2y ago

gnabgib 2y ago
(2009) Some discussion over the years: 57 points, 15 years ago, 25 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=668197 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=668197 36 points, 7 years ago, 10 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15616782 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15616782
kelseyfrog 2y ago
How does giving directions work in Japan? I'm struggling to understand how this would translate, "Go north three miles on High St. Turn left onto 2nd street and go 500m. Then take Park Ave south for 100m."
- kbolino 2y ago
  As far as I can tell, in a dense Japanese city, directions start relative to a particular train station, then use distances and landmarks to go from there.
  - redwall_hp 2y ago
    That's pretty much how directions work outside of major cities in the US too, except for a lack of train stations, and the more rural you get the more landmarks are replaced with shibboleths. "Go about ten minutes that way until you see the old Smith farm. [The Smiths haven't lived there for three generations.] Then take a left and head five minutes down Mill Road. [It's actually called something else, has never had a mill on it in its entire history, but is called that by the locals nonetheless.]" Eventually you start wondering when you tripped and fell into a Discworld novel.
    - jiveturkey 2y ago
      I even hear these kind of place names on fire/police radio.
    - kalleboo 2y ago
      As well characterized by Slim Dusty and Ernie Constance in "Just can't miss it, mate" https://archive.org/details/ka-you-just-cant-miss-it-mate https://archive.org/details/ka-you-just-cant-miss-it-mate
    - inopinatus 2y ago
      In the UK and Ireland you navigate by pubs, since it is topologically impossible to traverse any connected area without passing at least one pub. The granularity of directions is therefore highest in Dublin (c.f. Joyce, Ulysses, 1922)
- thatswrong0 2y ago
  When I was in Tokyo, it was basically: 1) Go to / be pointed the nearest train station, then ask random people for help close by if still can't see the number somewhere or parse the names. People all over are super willing to help even with a language barrier. They'll usually point you up a few streets, at landmarks, or general direction. I'd often end up having to ask like 4 people on the way lol 2) If you're meeting with friends, you meet at the train station then go from there. I don't know how anyone got around there before mapping software.
  - resolutebat 2y ago
    I lived in Tokyo before Google Maps, and the answer was: printed maps. Every business card had a map on the back, every ad for an event had a map, every personal invitation had a hand-drawn map. But yeah, if you were going somewhere as a group, you'd meet at a known point (outside train station etc) and then head over together. If you were roughing it on your own and only had the address, things got more interesting. Train stations always had detailed maps of major landmarks, so finding those was not an issue. If you were looking for something too small to be covered (say, a restaurant), you'd head to the chōme and then start winnowing down. Police boxes (koban) always had detailed neighborhood maps bolted to a wall nearby listing every single business and family by name, albeit usually in handwritten Japanese only, and you could ask the cops for directions too. The final boss was the non-linear numbering house scheme though. Some friends and I once spent a fruitless hour searching for the HR Giger bar in Tokyo, which we knew was at X-Y-Z, but only managed to find X-Y-(Z+1) and X-Y-(Z-1).
- donatj 2y ago
  When I was in Japan in 2008, I found if I asked someone how to get somewhere they would often just walk you there, even if it was several blocks.
- inopinatus 2y ago
  How I navigate in Japan: 1. Get the hotel / company / restaurant's business card with the address in kanji 2. Show that to your taxi driver 3. Taxi driver ignores the address and puts the phone number in their GPS or 1. Take the train/metro to the approximate location 2. Your destination will be noted in the signage by exit number Step (2) is especially fun at Shinjuku, at which point you call your friend who says they'll meet you at the South Gate. Which one though?
- kalleboo 2y ago
  For shorter distances you use landmarks, like known chains of convenience stores or restaurants. For longer distances, larger roads do have route numbers (county route 69, national route 3, etc).
- bane 2y ago
  Landmarks. It's similar to how directions are given in other countries with large urban areas and shaky addressing systems. "Turn left at this coffee shop, right at the second church..." When my wife first moved to the U.S. from Korea I couldn't figure out why she was so insistent on using landmarks to navigate, but eventually learned this was the reason. When we went out to rural areas where I grew up, she would become completely lost because it's not generally as landmark dense and the mental system she had accumulated didn't work as well. That was when she finally had to learn the U.S. system.
tforcram 2y ago
I remember living in Japan around 2001 and having to handle random addresses. We had several atlas books of regions and neighborhoods. Looking up an address was an exercise in getting the right book for the neighborhood, then using an index which noted which block of the map that house number was in (eg 'c10' using a grid with numbers across the top and letters down the side). Plotting a course from where you were to this location was also exciting and required patching together multiple maps. Actually following that course in real life was another challenge altogether and really required visualizing what you saw on the map since, as noted, there aren't many street names. I'm honestly surprised we were able to succeed at getting to places as often as we did. I kind of miss that experience, just plugging an address into a phone and following directions is much less exciting.
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  The piecing together of multiple maps doesn't sound much different from the days when we relied upon "The Thomas Guide to Los Angeles & Orange Counties": https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-8541cb8ec83526640938d192a5baa526-lq https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-8541cb8ec83526640938d... > just plugging an address into a phone and following directions is much less exciting. Something I realised a year or two back: my mental model of breaking down a larger goal into smaller subgoals is navigation. If you want to get from somewhere in Los Angeles to somewhere in San Francisco, and that step needs to be broken down, it can be analysed into (a) get from LA to Harris Ranch, then (b) get from Harris Ranch to SF. Obviously people growing up now don't think of things that way any more, because you don't have to be able to think of the equivalent of Harris Ranch on demand; what do you all use instead as a mental model?
  - gedy 2y ago
    First job was a delivery driver pre-Internet and Thomas guide was a lifesaver. It's hard to explain to younger people my pride in that I was "good" at finding multiple addresses and plotting best course between locations, then knowing where phone booths were to call in on the road, etc. Definitely makes me appreciate GPS and mobile mapping apps.
- 2y ago
amadeuspagel 2y ago
This is cool, because it means that naming matches a sense of closeness. Someone living on the same street can live quite far away from me, but someone living in the same block is close. Christopher Alexander wrote about the advantage of small named units. You could organize a party for a block, but not for a street.
mortenjorck 2y ago
The funny thing with the Chicago example is that Chicago actually does have a legacy system for addressing blocks! The examples from River North wouldn't be included (it dates from 1830 and only covers the original 58 blocks centered around the Y of the Chicago River), but you can see the historical map here: http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/11175.html http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/11175.html The only popular use of this system in living memory has been the long-in-development Block 37 project in the Loop that finally opened in 2016, about seven years after this post.
- pimlottc 2y ago
  Huh, I never really thought about where the name “Block 37” came from, that’s pretty interesting!
awad 2y ago
South Korea was like this too but they thankfully switched recently. It's not uncommon to receive addresses in both the old and new style since most locals grew up on the former.
- bane 2y ago
  The new South Korean addressing scheme is kind of a mess and I think a missed opportunity. i.e. Street names (gil) can be derived from larger roads (ro). e.g. Toegrye-ro is the major road, and Toegye-ro 48-gil is a street that branches from it. Odd number gil are on one side (Toegye-ro 49-gil, 51-gil etc.) and even (48-gil, 50-gil, etc.) on the other. But then there's not really an addressable road beneath the ro (okay, alleys I guess), so you also end up with multiple Toegye-ro 50-gils, some of which just change names to other multiple numbered gils as you cross intersections, but some don't. So the specific street names are rather localized, and somewhat just replace the function served by navigating by area. Building numbers are somewhat sane, but don't map to the street frontage, meaning the numbered streets have no alignment to the numbered buildings, yet the building numbers already use an ascending or descending dashed system (e.g. 89-2) that's supposed to help in navigating at the sub-ro level (alleys again). So the great re-addressing effort didn't really add a lot of navigational power over the previous system. And in practice, even with GPS, many people just find the numbered -gil or use the old address and just ask a local for directions or walk around for a while hoping to find the thing they're looking for. Example: Take a look at the link below, at the nearby area, and tell me how many Toegye-ro 50-gils there are! https://www.google.com/maps/place/Seoul,+South+Korea/@37.5618716,127.0007116,20.21z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x357ca2012d5c39cf:0x7e11eca1405bf29b!8m2!3d37.5518911!4d126.9917937!16zL20vMGhzcWY?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/place/Seoul,+South+Korea/@37.561...
tuan 2y ago
this reminds me of issue I had when I heard American on TV or movies use number of blocks to describe a distance, for example: "my house is three blocks away from here". I thought block is a unit, just like meter or kilometer. I've wondered for a long time how many meters in a block there are. Just for comparison, in Vietnam, we say something like "my house is about 100m away from here" or something like that. If you look at the map of city like Hanoi, Vietnam, you'll see why we cannot use "blocks" to describe distance.
- aidenn0 2y ago
  It's only a very vague distance in many places in the US as well, but it's typically between 100 and 200 meters. In Manhattan (a popular location for US mass media) a block running north-south is 80 meters, but an east-west block is variable and about 250 meters. Chicago also uses a rectangular block, but with east-west blocks being shorter at 100 meters and north-south blocks being 200 meters. Where I live, a block is 160 meters downtown (10 blocks to a mile).
  - tuan 2y ago
    Interesting. I didn't know that. Do you do the conversion in your head, like 2 blocks = 160*2 meters, when someone use blocks in a conversation ? Just curious. also ... LOOK everyone I found an American who uses metric system as first choice in their post!!!
    - opinion-is-bad 2y ago
      The Chicago grid is actually based on fractions of a mile (1/8 and 1/16 iirc), and when I lived there I would absolutely convert blocks to miles automatically when talking to people.
    - nemomarx 2y ago
      I think it's more navigational? like I know "oh, I'd cross three streets and then be at the house" roughly, more than thinking about distance. It kinda equals effort to walk there and how often you'll stop for traffic more.
philip1209 2y ago
Uri, co-founder of Waze, mentioned this on the Lenny's Podcast last week. I wonder if this prompted the post: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/lessons-from-a-two-time-unicorn-builder-50-time-startup-advisor-and-20-time-company-board-member/ https://www.lennyspodcast.com/lessons-from-a-two-time-unicor...
hiccuphippo 2y ago
How about a country with neither? Here's a documentary about Costa Rica: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxWfpBQvfLs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxWfpBQvfLs
ThePowerOfFuet 2y ago
Which block is to the left of 40 on that map of Tokyo?
- kps 2y ago
  Also part of 40. (In Google Maps, you can click on a building to get its address.) Actually, for me today the ‘40’ renders on the west part.
jncfhnb 2y ago
Combine these with the street maps that are not oriented north but the direction you’re facing and you’re gonna have a bad time
- rjh29 2y ago
  I have gradually come to like those, but I had to unlearn expecting them to be north aligned first
- justsomehnguy 2y ago
  > the direction you’re facing I'm fine with these, but it's like unspoken rule to never indicate the true directions, even if it's gigantic 2m x 2m billboard.
rjh29 2y ago
Kyoto has this sorted. It's on a grid system, and every horizontal and vertical street has a name. When giving full addresses it is done like so 京都市中京区堀川通御池西下る西三坊堀川町521番地 Very long! 京都市 (Kyoto city) 中京区 (district/ward) 堀川通 (vertical road) 御池西 (horizontal road) 下る (go south) 西三坊堀川町 (neighbourhood) 521番地 (block number) In other words you are told the crossing of two roads and which direction to travel from there.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
mjevans 2y ago
I would love for a universal address like... (Earth) GPS (Elevation, meters, postfixed) (Unit # or Label) E.G. N47°26'39.4" W122°18'03.8" Departures Road Bay 20 A (random) place at the major airport nearest to me (as a not DOX example). Also note now the North / West have been moved to prefix the GPS scalar elements, as the biggest shift in direction. Contrast: SEA Seattle International Airport Departures Road Bay 20 SeaTac WA 98158 For street signs I'd expect MAJOR intersections to get big labels that include the full address, with the most geographically major components (the ones that barely ever change in a city) the smallest. small: N47° large: 26'39.4" small: W122° large: 18'03.8" N47°26'39.4" W122°18'03.8" Departures Road Bay 20 N47°26'30.0" W122°17'57.5" Departures Road Bay 2 Google's Map also has 'plus codes' CPR2+J7 SeaTac, Washington https://maps.google.com/pluscodes/ https://maps.google.com/pluscodes/ and https://github.com/google/open-location-code https://github.com/google/open-location-code Which seems like a compelling variation for encoding the GPS value. The algorithm is described here: https://github.com/google/open-location-code/blob/main/Documentation/Specification/specification.md https://github.com/google/open-location-code/blob/main/Docum... Key notes: Normalize the GPS coords to +/- values (+/-90 and 180), then add 90 or 180 respectively to create an unsigned index along the range. The 10 largest steps are pairs of 0-19 encoding interleaved, while after that it's single step with the remaining fractional parts of Latitude * 2.5e7 (extract mod 5, *4), Long * 8.192e6 (extract mod 4) for each character after the 10th. The specification page does a FAR better job explaining things, but if link rot happens hopefully the summary here is sufficient.
- somat 2y ago
  My boil the ocean dream revolves around the idea that addresses are inherently hierarchical but we present them in this screwball mixed format. the address should be(I will admit your address mixes a few level so my example may be incorrect) /USA/98158/WA/SeaTac/Departures Road/bay 20/SEA Seattle International Airport I always store a description with each one. /country/zip code/city/street/bay/address Or you could go full ldap /country=USA/zip=98158/state=WA/city=SeaTac/street=Departures Road/bay=20/address=SEA Seattle International Airport but I hate the way that looks. And actually on topic, in many Utah cities the street address are sort of like that 500 south, 3000 west, etc. their reference point is the center of the known universe... the morman tabernacle naturally.
userbinator 2y ago
In my experience, hallways in large buildings usually don't have names nor numbers either; only the rooms, and sometimes blocks are numbered too.
zdc1 2y ago
In Singapore, post/ZIP codes refer to a specific address, building, or block. While letters will still have a full name + address, it seems to mostly be there for error correction and to specify unit numbers.
unscaled 2y ago
Most major roads in Japanese cities have names. Smaller roads do not. But except for certain cities (Kyoto, Sapporo perhaps) they're just not used for addresses.
johnea 2y ago
A really lame article about an actually very interesting system.
1n3nt0r 2y ago
It should be noted that in spite of the devastation of Tokyo in WW2, many parts of Tokyo retained the pre-war system of neighborhoods and streets, where streets might often not be straight, or start and terminate abruptly within the boundaries of a neighborhood. Like some other responders, I also lived in Tokyo pre-google maps (in the 90s). The system of location one would use in central Tokyo was: (city 市 or 都 = such as central Tokyo)-> ward (ku 区 = such as Shibuya-ku, if in a city) -> area within ward (such as Aoyama) -> the block / area (chome 丁目 = such as 7 chome, or 7th area) the house number For those unfamiliar with an area would first observe the map at the nearest train station to locate the area / chome. As one was walking and potentially got lost, could check street posts for the current chome and an occasional neighborhood map / sign to locate more precisely. Personally I found navigating this way a lot of fun and an alternative hierarchical way of thinking about location.

114 points by rmason 2y ago

(2009) Some discussion over the years: 57 points, 15 years ago, 25 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=668197 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=668197 36 points, 7 years ago, 10 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15616782 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15616782

kelseyfrog 2y ago

How does giving directions work in Japan? I'm struggling to understand how this would translate, "Go north three miles on High St. Turn left onto 2nd street and go 500m. Then take Park Ave south for 100m."

kbolino 2y ago
As far as I can tell, in a dense Japanese city, directions start relative to a particular train station, then use distances and landmarks to go from there.
- redwall_hp 2y ago
  That's pretty much how directions work outside of major cities in the US too, except for a lack of train stations, and the more rural you get the more landmarks are replaced with shibboleths. "Go about ten minutes that way until you see the old Smith farm. [The Smiths haven't lived there for three generations.] Then take a left and head five minutes down Mill Road. [It's actually called something else, has never had a mill on it in its entire history, but is called that by the locals nonetheless.]" Eventually you start wondering when you tripped and fell into a Discworld novel.
  - jiveturkey 2y ago
    I even hear these kind of place names on fire/police radio.
  - kalleboo 2y ago
    As well characterized by Slim Dusty and Ernie Constance in "Just can't miss it, mate" https://archive.org/details/ka-you-just-cant-miss-it-mate https://archive.org/details/ka-you-just-cant-miss-it-mate
  - inopinatus 2y ago
    In the UK and Ireland you navigate by pubs, since it is topologically impossible to traverse any connected area without passing at least one pub. The granularity of directions is therefore highest in Dublin (c.f. Joyce, Ulysses, 1922)
thatswrong0 2y ago
When I was in Tokyo, it was basically: 1) Go to / be pointed the nearest train station, then ask random people for help close by if still can't see the number somewhere or parse the names. People all over are super willing to help even with a language barrier. They'll usually point you up a few streets, at landmarks, or general direction. I'd often end up having to ask like 4 people on the way lol 2) If you're meeting with friends, you meet at the train station then go from there. I don't know how anyone got around there before mapping software.
- resolutebat 2y ago
  I lived in Tokyo before Google Maps, and the answer was: printed maps. Every business card had a map on the back, every ad for an event had a map, every personal invitation had a hand-drawn map. But yeah, if you were going somewhere as a group, you'd meet at a known point (outside train station etc) and then head over together. If you were roughing it on your own and only had the address, things got more interesting. Train stations always had detailed maps of major landmarks, so finding those was not an issue. If you were looking for something too small to be covered (say, a restaurant), you'd head to the chōme and then start winnowing down. Police boxes (koban) always had detailed neighborhood maps bolted to a wall nearby listing every single business and family by name, albeit usually in handwritten Japanese only, and you could ask the cops for directions too. The final boss was the non-linear numbering house scheme though. Some friends and I once spent a fruitless hour searching for the HR Giger bar in Tokyo, which we knew was at X-Y-Z, but only managed to find X-Y-(Z+1) and X-Y-(Z-1).
donatj 2y ago
When I was in Japan in 2008, I found if I asked someone how to get somewhere they would often just walk you there, even if it was several blocks.
inopinatus 2y ago
How I navigate in Japan: 1. Get the hotel / company / restaurant's business card with the address in kanji 2. Show that to your taxi driver 3. Taxi driver ignores the address and puts the phone number in their GPS or 1. Take the train/metro to the approximate location 2. Your destination will be noted in the signage by exit number Step (2) is especially fun at Shinjuku, at which point you call your friend who says they'll meet you at the South Gate. Which one though?
kalleboo 2y ago
For shorter distances you use landmarks, like known chains of convenience stores or restaurants. For longer distances, larger roads do have route numbers (county route 69, national route 3, etc).
bane 2y ago
Landmarks. It's similar to how directions are given in other countries with large urban areas and shaky addressing systems. "Turn left at this coffee shop, right at the second church..." When my wife first moved to the U.S. from Korea I couldn't figure out why she was so insistent on using landmarks to navigate, but eventually learned this was the reason. When we went out to rural areas where I grew up, she would become completely lost because it's not generally as landmark dense and the mental system she had accumulated didn't work as well. That was when she finally had to learn the U.S. system.

tforcram 2y ago

I remember living in Japan around 2001 and having to handle random addresses. We had several atlas books of regions and neighborhoods. Looking up an address was an exercise in getting the right book for the neighborhood, then using an index which noted which block of the map that house number was in (eg 'c10' using a grid with numbers across the top and letters down the side). Plotting a course from where you were to this location was also exciting and required patching together multiple maps. Actually following that course in real life was another challenge altogether and really required visualizing what you saw on the map since, as noted, there aren't many street names. I'm honestly surprised we were able to succeed at getting to places as often as we did. I kind of miss that experience, just plugging an address into a phone and following directions is much less exciting.

082349872349872 2y ago
The piecing together of multiple maps doesn't sound much different from the days when we relied upon "The Thomas Guide to Los Angeles & Orange Counties": https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-8541cb8ec83526640938d192a5baa526-lq https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-8541cb8ec83526640938d... > just plugging an address into a phone and following directions is much less exciting. Something I realised a year or two back: my mental model of breaking down a larger goal into smaller subgoals is navigation. If you want to get from somewhere in Los Angeles to somewhere in San Francisco, and that step needs to be broken down, it can be analysed into (a) get from LA to Harris Ranch, then (b) get from Harris Ranch to SF. Obviously people growing up now don't think of things that way any more, because you don't have to be able to think of the equivalent of Harris Ranch on demand; what do you all use instead as a mental model?
- gedy 2y ago
  First job was a delivery driver pre-Internet and Thomas guide was a lifesaver. It's hard to explain to younger people my pride in that I was "good" at finding multiple addresses and plotting best course between locations, then knowing where phone booths were to call in on the road, etc. Definitely makes me appreciate GPS and mobile mapping apps.
2y ago

amadeuspagel 2y ago

This is cool, because it means that naming matches a sense of closeness. Someone living on the same street can live quite far away from me, but someone living in the same block is close. Christopher Alexander wrote about the advantage of small named units. You could organize a party for a block, but not for a street.

mortenjorck 2y ago

The funny thing with the Chicago example is that Chicago actually does have a legacy system for addressing blocks! The examples from River North wouldn't be included (it dates from 1830 and only covers the original 58 blocks centered around the Y of the Chicago River), but you can see the historical map here: http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/11175.html http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/11175.html The only popular use of this system in living memory has been the long-in-development Block 37 project in the Loop that finally opened in 2016, about seven years after this post.

pimlottc 2y ago
Huh, I never really thought about where the name “Block 37” came from, that’s pretty interesting!

awad 2y ago

South Korea was like this too but they thankfully switched recently. It's not uncommon to receive addresses in both the old and new style since most locals grew up on the former.

bane 2y ago
The new South Korean addressing scheme is kind of a mess and I think a missed opportunity. i.e. Street names (gil) can be derived from larger roads (ro). e.g. Toegrye-ro is the major road, and Toegye-ro 48-gil is a street that branches from it. Odd number gil are on one side (Toegye-ro 49-gil, 51-gil etc.) and even (48-gil, 50-gil, etc.) on the other. But then there's not really an addressable road beneath the ro (okay, alleys I guess), so you also end up with multiple Toegye-ro 50-gils, some of which just change names to other multiple numbered gils as you cross intersections, but some don't. So the specific street names are rather localized, and somewhat just replace the function served by navigating by area. Building numbers are somewhat sane, but don't map to the street frontage, meaning the numbered streets have no alignment to the numbered buildings, yet the building numbers already use an ascending or descending dashed system (e.g. 89-2) that's supposed to help in navigating at the sub-ro level (alleys again). So the great re-addressing effort didn't really add a lot of navigational power over the previous system. And in practice, even with GPS, many people just find the numbered -gil or use the old address and just ask a local for directions or walk around for a while hoping to find the thing they're looking for. Example: Take a look at the link below, at the nearby area, and tell me how many Toegye-ro 50-gils there are! https://www.google.com/maps/place/Seoul,+South+Korea/@37.5618716,127.0007116,20.21z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x357ca2012d5c39cf:0x7e11eca1405bf29b!8m2!3d37.5518911!4d126.9917937!16zL20vMGhzcWY?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/place/Seoul,+South+Korea/@37.561...

tuan 2y ago

this reminds me of issue I had when I heard American on TV or movies use number of blocks to describe a distance, for example: "my house is three blocks away from here". I thought block is a unit, just like meter or kilometer. I've wondered for a long time how many meters in a block there are. Just for comparison, in Vietnam, we say something like "my house is about 100m away from here" or something like that. If you look at the map of city like Hanoi, Vietnam, you'll see why we cannot use "blocks" to describe distance.

aidenn0 2y ago
It's only a very vague distance in many places in the US as well, but it's typically between 100 and 200 meters. In Manhattan (a popular location for US mass media) a block running north-south is 80 meters, but an east-west block is variable and about 250 meters. Chicago also uses a rectangular block, but with east-west blocks being shorter at 100 meters and north-south blocks being 200 meters. Where I live, a block is 160 meters downtown (10 blocks to a mile).
- tuan 2y ago
  Interesting. I didn't know that. Do you do the conversion in your head, like 2 blocks = 160*2 meters, when someone use blocks in a conversation ? Just curious. also ... LOOK everyone I found an American who uses metric system as first choice in their post!!!
  - opinion-is-bad 2y ago
    The Chicago grid is actually based on fractions of a mile (1/8 and 1/16 iirc), and when I lived there I would absolutely convert blocks to miles automatically when talking to people.
  - nemomarx 2y ago
    I think it's more navigational? like I know "oh, I'd cross three streets and then be at the house" roughly, more than thinking about distance. It kinda equals effort to walk there and how often you'll stop for traffic more.

philip1209 2y ago

Uri, co-founder of Waze, mentioned this on the Lenny's Podcast last week. I wonder if this prompted the post: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/lessons-from-a-two-time-unicorn-builder-50-time-startup-advisor-and-20-time-company-board-member/ https://www.lennyspodcast.com/lessons-from-a-two-time-unicor...

hiccuphippo 2y ago

How about a country with neither? Here's a documentary about Costa Rica: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxWfpBQvfLs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxWfpBQvfLs

ThePowerOfFuet 2y ago

Which block is to the left of 40 on that map of Tokyo?

kps 2y ago
Also part of 40. (In Google Maps, you can click on a building to get its address.) Actually, for me today the ‘40’ renders on the west part.

jncfhnb 2y ago

Combine these with the street maps that are not oriented north but the direction you’re facing and you’re gonna have a bad time

rjh29 2y ago
I have gradually come to like those, but I had to unlearn expecting them to be north aligned first
justsomehnguy 2y ago
> the direction you’re facing I'm fine with these, but it's like unspoken rule to never indicate the true directions, even if it's gigantic 2m x 2m billboard.

rjh29 2y ago

Kyoto has this sorted. It's on a grid system, and every horizontal and vertical street has a name. When giving full addresses it is done like so 京都市中京区堀川通御池西下る西三坊堀川町521番地 Very long! 京都市 (Kyoto city) 中京区 (district/ward) 堀川通 (vertical road) 御池西 (horizontal road) 下る (go south) 西三坊堀川町 (neighbourhood) 521番地 (block number) In other words you are told the crossing of two roads and which direction to travel from there.

deleted 2y ago
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mjevans 2y ago

I would love for a universal address like... (Earth) GPS (Elevation, meters, postfixed) (Unit # or Label) E.G. N47°26'39.4" W122°18'03.8" Departures Road Bay 20 A (random) place at the major airport nearest to me (as a not DOX example). Also note now the North / West have been moved to prefix the GPS scalar elements, as the biggest shift in direction. Contrast: SEA Seattle International Airport Departures Road Bay 20 SeaTac WA 98158 For street signs I'd expect MAJOR intersections to get big labels that include the full address, with the most geographically major components (the ones that barely ever change in a city) the smallest. small: N47° large: 26'39.4" small: W122° large: 18'03.8" N47°26'39.4" W122°18'03.8" Departures Road Bay 20 N47°26'30.0" W122°17'57.5" Departures Road Bay 2 Google's Map also has 'plus codes' CPR2+J7 SeaTac, Washington https://maps.google.com/pluscodes/ https://maps.google.com/pluscodes/ and https://github.com/google/open-location-code https://github.com/google/open-location-code Which seems like a compelling variation for encoding the GPS value. The algorithm is described here: https://github.com/google/open-location-code/blob/main/Documentation/Specification/specification.md https://github.com/google/open-location-code/blob/main/Docum... Key notes: Normalize the GPS coords to +/- values (+/-90 and 180), then add 90 or 180 respectively to create an unsigned index along the range. The 10 largest steps are pairs of 0-19 encoding interleaved, while after that it's single step with the remaining fractional parts of Latitude * 2.5e7 (extract mod 5, *4), Long * 8.192e6 (extract mod 4) for each character after the 10th. The specification page does a FAR better job explaining things, but if link rot happens hopefully the summary here is sufficient.

somat 2y ago
My boil the ocean dream revolves around the idea that addresses are inherently hierarchical but we present them in this screwball mixed format. the address should be(I will admit your address mixes a few level so my example may be incorrect) /USA/98158/WA/SeaTac/Departures Road/bay 20/SEA Seattle International Airport I always store a description with each one. /country/zip code/city/street/bay/address Or you could go full ldap /country=USA/zip=98158/state=WA/city=SeaTac/street=Departures Road/bay=20/address=SEA Seattle International Airport but I hate the way that looks. And actually on topic, in many Utah cities the street address are sort of like that 500 south, 3000 west, etc. their reference point is the center of the known universe... the morman tabernacle naturally.

userbinator 2y ago

In my experience, hallways in large buildings usually don't have names nor numbers either; only the rooms, and sometimes blocks are numbered too.

zdc1 2y ago

In Singapore, post/ZIP codes refer to a specific address, building, or block. While letters will still have a full name + address, it seems to mostly be there for error correction and to specify unit numbers.

unscaled 2y ago

Most major roads in Japanese cities have names. Smaller roads do not. But except for certain cities (Kyoto, Sapporo perhaps) they're just not used for addresses.

johnea 2y ago

A really lame article about an actually very interesting system.

1n3nt0r 2y ago

It should be noted that in spite of the devastation of Tokyo in WW2, many parts of Tokyo retained the pre-war system of neighborhoods and streets, where streets might often not be straight, or start and terminate abruptly within the boundaries of a neighborhood. Like some other responders, I also lived in Tokyo pre-google maps (in the 90s). The system of location one would use in central Tokyo was: (city 市 or 都 = such as central Tokyo)-> ward (ku 区 = such as Shibuya-ku, if in a city) -> area within ward (such as Aoyama) -> the block / area (chome 丁目 = such as 7 chome, or 7th area) the house number For those unfamiliar with an area would first observe the map at the nearest train station to locate the area / chome. As one was walking and potentially got lost, could check street posts for the current chome and an occasional neighborhood map / sign to locate more precisely. Personally I found navigating this way a lot of fun and an alternative hierarchical way of thinking about location.