Japanese Addresses: the opposite is also true [video]
sivers.org
sivers.org
(These days all the routing is computerized, but prior to that all routing made use of the fact that Japanese addresses get progressively more specific. You used that to sort the parcel at every location so that it got to a distribution center closer to the destination, at which point one of your carriers who had worked in that neighborhood for years would get it directly to the proper door.)
I don’t know how many postmen share each zip code. In Copenhagen the western district has been sub-divided into a lot of zip codes so it could be that each is its own route, but they only did it for the western district, the other districts still only have a single zip code — I suspect that they did it to simplify sorting but found that people are more likely to make mistakes (when you have a dozen zip codes for the colloquially same district).
Anyway, GPS makes the whole issue moot. Use your damn iPhone!
"Sure", you say, "but streets are also arbitrarily named". Occasionally true. But there are many fewer of them than there are of blocks or buildings. Streets are long. If I say I need to get to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, a taxi driver in DC knows exactly where Pennsylvania Avenue is -- or only needs to look up that one name -- and can go right there. If I say I need to get to 3-14-13, Higashi-gotanda, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo 141 Japan, then the taxi driver starts pulling out his street atlas. Okay I know where Shinagawa-ku is. Next, where's Gotanda, okay. Where's Higashi, district 13? Okay. Where's block 14? Building 3? Now, how do I get there? That's a lot of lookups, every one of which is randomized.
The opposite of this hideous mess is how things are laid out in, of all places, Utah. Mormon settlements were laid out intelligently on a grid. The axes of the grid are the only streets with names --well, in the original plan anyway -- (In Salt Lake City it's State Street and South Temple Street). The remaining streets are named for the tick location on the grid on which they reside. Heading west from the origin, we have 100 West, 200 West, 300 West, etc. Heading south from the origin, we have 100 South, 200 South, 300 South, etc. Your address is also a number: if you're on 200 South, and your house is, say, a quarter of the way between 200 West and 300 West, then your address is 225 West 200 South. In a design like this you don't even need a map.
Mannheim’s old city center has these regular, almost quadratic blocks (called „Quadrate“) which are very unusual to find in any European city. If those regular shaped blocks made Mannheim name its blocks, not streets, why didn’t the same thing happen in the US (where those kinds of blocks are much more common) at least once? I think that’s a intriguing question.
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Mannheim_Inn... (Photo)
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadratestadt (sadly, only in German)
Meeting points and directions are generally expressed in terms of landmarks like train stations.
The system isn't really that strange. We (in america) use the same system of space decomposition for states, counties, and (in some places) cities. This just continues breaking it down to city regions (区), district name, chunk of blocks（丁目), block number, and finally house number. It's consistent with the larger scale system, and it handles change pretty gracefully.
In the block themselves there may also be a map of the block with the houses and the family names of the owners. Houses themselves don't have a number plaque but they have the owner's name at the entrance. Apartment buildings tend to have a (more or less pompous) name as well. Here "mansion" means an apartment :)
Generally you don't need to ask though, since the websites for japanese shops usually have a detailed map, and people who invite you will give you landmarks.
Also, to me the word "opposite" seems misplaced. I think that "complimentary" would be more apt. It follows that adage that whenever there is more than one way to do something someone will choose each.
Even in America, there isn't necessarily some standard format for giving directions. If you spend any time around career military folks, they tend to give directions which include north, south, east and west as a critical part of the explanation. Many civilians cannot make heads nor tails of such directions.
I am reminded of an anecdote (probably from Reader's Digest) where an American man working with a Japanese company was frustrated at his inability to get on the same page with these folks. One day when things finally seemed to be getting better, he remarked they were "thinking along parallel lines". The Japanese man agreed. Some time later when they were again at an impasse, he referenced that discussion. The Japanese man then replied "Parallel lines never meet".