And if you're still not convinced Japan is different, you should watch some of their commercials

The US does have block names, but they're not used with the mailing address. So the address 29 Main Street might be block 15, lot 41. The latter is what identifies the piece of land for legal matters, or to professionals like surveyors.

I work with data like this professionally, and I have to say that there's simply no way that using block/lot values to locate a property can be more efficient than mailing addresses. You're replacing a line labelled using sequential numbers with a polygon labelled using randomly ordered numbers. Moreover, when you're not even naming the streets, giving directions is a near impossibility, which is why Japan is littered with maps to the local blocks, and all attempts at directions require citing nearby landmarks every step of the way.

So Japanese addressing isn't just different. It's much, much worse.

I'm think a GPS might have trouble giving directions!

What if there is single rode, no blocks?

why do you need a street name if there is no location on that street?

http://www.tourist-mannheim.de/media/Die_Quadrate_Mannheims.jpg

I live here and, after 3 days, you could tell me any address and I knew exactly where to go (given you might have to walk around half the block). Best system I've ever seen.

#2 true. It seems that in order to navigate a city or town you would have to know the history of that city or town. You would have to know the order in which blocks were built and in which houses in blocks were built. Impossible for a visitor.

Well our system is objectively better. When you are looking for a house, you don't care when it was built, you just want to find it, and having them in order improves this task very much (not having to walk the entire block to find a house). Additionally, you must be able to name the roads so that you can give directions - there are roads without blocks around them, how do you tell where you are?

whatever works or floats your boat....

The Japanese system sound a bit stupid to me, I wouldn't want to be a bloody postman in Japan, that's a fact, although it's probably better than walking the streets.

still going to get lost though...