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Yeah, used to live in Japan and it was quite annoying.

The 'building number' having no relation to location is fairly useless. I generally had to explain through landmarks/obvious buildings where I wanted to go.

The whole system is pretty useless for giving directions.

It's better now with Smart phones (wasn't a thing when I first moved there), but still bad. Korea uses the same system afaik.

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Last I checked Korea is migrating to a system that resembles American addresses, but both systems are currently valid.

Ironically, most Koreans I've seen hate the new (America-like) street number system. The problem is that these streets are either (1) really long (say, five kilometers, which covers a lot in a dense city) or (2) one of the several hundred small lanes that branches off these long roads, all named like "XXX street 138-lane"

In the previous system, at least the address tells you which township ("dong") it belongs to, which is usually a walkable distance. (So, for example, you'd have a pretty good idea which subway station to use.) In the new system, it could be anywhere along a busy street running through several districts.

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