[Nyororin]

In regard to the Japanese address system... Which I kind of prefer - I`ll explain why at the end.

Roads here do not have to be made by the government. Anyone can make or remove a road (if the road is on their property, and if it is not a registered government road).

This means that companies and individuals will make their own access roads, and eliminate them for development purposes. Naming the smaller roads would really be pointless as they appear and disappear fairly regularly... However, national and prefectural government maintained roads are numbered - but even in those cases the addresses have nothing to do with the roads as the roads are free to move, be rerouted, etc, according to traffic needs.

House numbers are the mess that they are because of the increasingly smaller blocking off of properties. Let`s say we started with 1 house on a large chunk of land. It`s #1 - the next house on the next chunk of property next to it is #2, and so on. The town develops and they split the land in two but leave the original houses... There are no numbers between 1 and 2, so they either number 2-1, or stick 3 between. Then those plots are split again, so you get another layer. After splitting up a formerly huge plot into 20 to 50 blocks gradually, it gets to be a bit of a mess juggling the numbers.

However... You can always find the AREA where the building is. If someone hands me a street based address, the best I can do is scour a map looking for the street. I have NO idea where in town it is. In a big city, it could be anywhere. If the road is long and has a jump in numbers (pretty common), while I may be able to find the road I`ll have to pretty much travel the entire length to find the address.

With a Japanese address, I know right away what part of town it is. Look closer at that part of town, and I know pretty much immediately what area. Look closer, and it`s easy to tell which neighborhood, and then which block. Even small towns are split off into sections so you can at least easily find the immediate vicinity of the address. There is none of the "Wait, there is another Blahblah street with the even numbers between 1500 and 3500 on the complete other side of town?! And here I`ve been searching for an hour to find 2000!" (Has happened to me several times in the US.)
You can also easily ask people and they will get you closer and closer to your destination. Ask someone "Which way to Blahblah street?" - and if they aren`t familiar with the street name you`re completely out of luck... But everyone knows the neighboring areas. If you`re in, say, section A that is split into 1, 2, 3, and 4 - if you ask someone in A-1 which way to A-3, they`ll pretty much always be able to tell you how to get there. And once in A-3, you can pretty easily get directions to A-3-b, and so on.

I`ve never felt lost in Japan without a map, but I`ve been miserably lost in the US without one when trying to hunt for the way to get to a specific street.