It *is* that bad - it’s common for small businesses to include simple maps that use local landmarks as wayfinders on the back of their business cards. A friend who lives in Tokyo regularly stops local delivery service couriers when she’s driving in the city - the experienced ones are a good source of accurate directions, since even the most comprehensive local road atlases (in Japanese) can be very dense and hard to read.

No, it’s *not* that bad !!
Yes, Japanese cities are not on the US-style grid system, yes most of the streets have no name but this does not mean that people or businesses have no address.

Surprisingly, Japanese addresses are very logical and with a little training, it’s easy to find a place on the map, by zooming from the city to the borough (or ward as they say in English), down to the sub-borough, down to the block and then down to the houuse. On most city maps, houses are individually represented with their number in the block.

For the record, I do not speak or read Japanese but I never had any real problem finding my way in Japan using local maps. In my opinion, Japanese cartography is the best in the world, producing an amazing quantity of quality maps in a highly competitive environment, constantly updated.

I have always relied on local maps, including the free maps issued by the Japanese National Tourist Organisation, and they never failed me.
Also what is important in navigating Japan solo is to think spatially like the Japanese people, who collectively use the same geographical order throughout Japan, eg the directory for a hotel chain will list the cities in a North (Hokkaido) to South (Kyushu) order, ie if you look for a hotel in Nagoya, it will always be listed below Tokyo but above Osaka or Hiroshima, irrespective of the Japanese “alphabetical order”. More than any other country in the world, the mental representation of city space is arranged around the train and subway systems, which is well taken care of by the locally-produced maps.

Also: Internet mapping is excellent, check Mapion for example:
http://www.mapion.co.jp/

I have not seen the Tokyo Streetwise but frankly I am skeptical as to its added value, because the topic is already adequately covered by all that’s readily available for the foreigh visitor, often for free.

While the sanity of Japan’s address system is a dead-horse topic, I just can’t resist.

Quick refresher: The hard part of a japanese address is the final 2 numbers: the block number, and the building number.

The thing that makes the Japanese addressing system completely broken is that each of these numbers is assigned not through some simple spacial rule like clockwise or counterclockwise winding, but by date of construction.

This means that you sit there for a few minutes looking at a detailed map just to find the right block, and then you have to look around at all the different building numbers just to find the right one.

If you are walking around in a neighborhood, and you are looking for block 30 and building 5, and you are staring at block 29, unless you find a map, you are going to be in pain.

And the last comment is correct. Age of construction.
Since it is not site specific, a ‘place’ can be inside the block with an easement to the interior, and therefore the number is not on the outside sometimes.
Locals know and you ask them. Afterwards you know and can find it.
The postman knows as they have to do the walk.

So when you walk around a block it can go
1,9,2,8,17,10,11, around the corner and 3,4,16,15,
and next 5,6,7,9,12,14,13.

Not impossible, but not a sequence that a few foreigners are used to.

Western North Americans can’t get used to the Eastern North America and their ‘British’ numbering. I’ll use Yonge Street in Toronto which has 1 on the lake and 55000 in Barrie, with no block plaiting as in the West, but the numbers in sequence.

How many Londoners have how many A-Zeds at home or in the car’s boot?