Believe it or not, most streets in Tokyo are not named. How the hell do you find anything then? Tokyo is made up of 23 wards, which I think of as neighborhoods. Each ward is then broken down into districts and the districts are further divided into chome. If you're lucky enough to have an address for a place, it looks something like this: 1-22-14 Jinan, Shibuya. It reads from right to left, getting more specific as it goes. Shibuya is one of the 23 Tokyo neighborhoods, Jinan is a district in Shibuya. The chome are numbered - in this example we are looking for chome 1. Now it gets totally confusing - the 22 represents the block and 14 represents the building. Problem is, the numbers aren't sequential - they're numbered in the order of their construction. So, forget getting an address, going to Google maps and finding it.
What most places do is advertise where they are on the map in relation to the nearest subway stop. In the photo above, the rail line is shown as is the station - it has the initials JR on it, which represent the name of the line. Then there is a star or arrow showing where the place is in reference to the subway. Everyone employs this map tactic - restaurants, shops, government buildings. Without the metro as the guiding point, I don't know how you'd ever find anything. I would imagine there is a steep learning curve for the mailmen!
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