People use landmarks for direction instead of addresses (since nobody can understand exactly where an address is). There are also small police stations (koban)

People use landmarks for direction instead of addresses (since nobody can understand exactly where an address is). There are also small police stations (koban) everywhere in the city that are glad to help someone looking for direction: they take the map of the nearby district and look with you house correspond to the address. Of course, now with gps becoming common for taxi drivers you can now tell them directly the address, before they wouldn't have been able to help you if all you had was the address without any landmarks or map on how to get there.