About Tokyo's Street Names and Address System

Above, a Roppongi intersection. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

It took me about three trips to Tokyo before I got some sort of semblance of being able to figure out the city's street system. Finding an address is another story.

Back in 2006, I had to find the office of Kadokawa Pictures. I was in the general area but was unable to find the place. Fortunately, the New Otani Hotel in Chiyoda (which was used as Osata Chemicals headquarters in You Only Live Twice) was in the area and I checked with their concierge desk and they gave me a detailed map. I just handed it to a taxi driver he got me there within minutes.

Still, it is not unusual to get "mighty bewildered" when trying to find an address. What I found helpful (besides a hotel) was to ask a local, go to a police koban or, if lucky, go to a visitor information office.

Time Out Tokyo has an article explaining Tokyo's street system.

It begins with:

Were U2 singing about Tokyo all along? In this city, only a handful of the main thoroughfares and shopping streets have honorary street names, such as Meiji-dori and Takeshita-dori. Other than that, rather than having street names, we’ve given names to areas and assigned numbers to the districts or sections within them, which are then counted as ‘chome’. For example, Aoyama It-chome is thus Aoyama (District) 1. 

So when you’re looking at a map, you first need to find the area and then you can go searching within it. Theoretically it’s a lot faster than trying to figure out at what end of that long street number 98 is.

To read more, go here.