P-chan lost in Nerima!

P-chan lost in Nerima! (again...)
But this time a good lesson on Japanese addresses is on the way!
-- by Yawmin --

Well, P-chan has disappeared again and Akane is looking around anxiously for it. Another bad trick by Ranma? Or maybe Shampoo has kidnapped it in order to have it served as this evening's main dish at Neko Hanten restaurant? No, no Akane-san, don't worry, your P-chan is safe. It has just lost its way back home, as usual. But this time we'll try to help it with a special lesson on Japanese street addresses. Let's hope that P-chan will learn from it some more good sense of orientation and that such lesson may also help some other problematic people such as Ryoga-kun. Bye the way, strange to say, but that Ryoga-kun and P-chan share a lot of particul features, right? We all wonder the reason...

Until 1946, when SCAP first decided to assign letters and numbers to major cities' streets and areas, Japanese houses didn't have any mark or number that could help to locate them. Nowadays, in cities like Tokyo or Kyoto, you may even find major roads marked by a proper name, like the central Tokyo avenues 'Meiji douri' or 'Shouwa douri' for istance. Anyway, more commonly Japanese addresses feature some of the following elements and not proper names:

KEN It could be translated as prefecture.
GUN This is a subdivision of a KEN and it could be approssimately translated as 'rural district'.
SHI It means 'city'. Places with the status of a city are treated independently of GUN.
KU Commonly translated as 'ward'. A KU or ward is a section of a large city as Tokyo or Kyoto for instance.
MACHI (or CHOU) In country districts it means 'town', but it can both refer or to a vaste zone of coltivation fields and buildings, or to one of the many different areas of a large city. MACHI is a subdivision of KU and sometimes it may only have administrative purposes.
CHOUME A further division of a MACHI or CHOU.
BANCHI It is a section of a CHOUME. BAN means 'number' and CHI means 'ground'.
GOU The smallest subdivision of all. This kanji also means 'number'. Next to it sometimes there is some further data indicating the floor or flat number of the location.

In postal addresses, as a general rule, these elements should be placed in the order shown above with the receiver name at the end of the address itself.

For example:
example of Japanese address

If you need to reach a location by a written address, sometimes it may prove a quite difficult task if you don't know quite well the zone itself. Among all the address elements, especially CHOUME may prove particularly difficult to be located because even if you manage to find the adiacent numbers, often the place you are looking for is in a different distant area. That's because CHOUME numbers have been assigned by refering to the cronological time when they have been built. Therefore CHOUME 7 may not be necessary adiacent to CHOUME 8 or CHOUME 6. In such situations the best way could be to ask someone passing by, or, quite better, to ask the local policemen at the KOUBAN . Usually policemen own a quite deep knowledge of their territory, actually even deeper than postmen, and they can check on some very specially detailed area maps.

Notes:

KOUBAN : kouban is the street corner 'police box'. Street corner kouban system (dating back to the days of the Tokugawa shogunate) puts the policemen right in the middle of the area they should control. kouban officers, therefore, regularly patrol the nearby streets, they have a regular register of local residents, and they keep an eye on anything that looks suspicious (sometimes even by meddling with people's private life and business). Really much of the credit for Japan's quite low crime statistics goes to such institutions that are now being studied by several other Asian countries and USA.
SCAP : formed in November 1945, the Suprem Command for Allied Powers was an organism created in order to reform Japan after World War II.

Kanji and Kana reference:

Bibliography:

Japan as it is - A bilingual guide/revised edition, Tokyo, Gakken Co., 1985 (4th edition, 1991), pages 121, 160.
L' économie du Japon, by Maurice Moreau, Paris, Presse Universitaires de France, 1959 (10th edition, 1993), page 83.
Japanese for all occasions - The right word at the right time, by Anne Kaneko, Tokyo & Ruthland (Vermont), Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1991 (second printing, 1991), pages 238-241.
Everyday Japanese Characters - a visitor's guide to the written language, by Michael Pye, London, Duckworth, 1980, pages 64-65.

Back to Ranma 1/2 index page

No. no P-chan,
that's again the wrong way...

KEN		It could be translated as prefecture.
GUN		This is a subdivision of a KEN and it could be approssimately translated as 'rural district'.
SHI		It means 'city'. Places with the status of a city are treated independently of GUN.
KU		Commonly translated as 'ward'. A KU or ward is a section of a large city as Tokyo or Kyoto for instance.
MACHI (or CHOU)		In country districts it means 'town', but it can both refer or to a vaste zone of coltivation fields and buildings, or to one of the many different areas of a large city. MACHI is a subdivision of KU and sometimes it may only have administrative purposes.
CHOUME		A further division of a MACHI or CHOU.
BANCHI		It is a section of a CHOUME. BAN means 'number' and CHI means 'ground'.
GOU		The smallest subdivision of all. This kanji also means 'number'. Next to it sometimes there is some further data indicating the floor or flat number of the location.