Column #93 Kanji Clinic, The Japan Times, October 28, 2008
"Write your ‘home sweet home’ in kanji"
Recently, a friend in North Carolina showed me a yellowing nengajou (年賀状, New Year’s card) I had sent her soon after first arriving in
Japan back in the early ‘80s. The return address, penciled in my best
effort at the time -- a childlike, uneven kanji-scrawl-- reminded me of
the intense determination I felt then to become proficient in Japanese.
Despite the wizardry of today’s Japanese word-processing software, a quarter of a century later, I am still required on a regular basis to write my home address by hand. Many foreign residents of Japan from a non-kanji background fall into the permanent habit of using romaji (ローマ字, the Roman alphabet) to write their address. If writing your address in Nihongo is intimidating, here’s some advice on getting started.
Before going public, practice at home on lined paper. Don’t be overly
concerned with aesthetics: Aim for legibility at first. Take advantage
of every opportunity to write your address in Japanese: on forms from your
child’s school and at your workplace; on envelopes and takkyuubin (宅急便, home-delivery service) labels; at doctors’ offices, the bank,
city hall, or video rental shops; when you apply for a driver’s license,
cell phone service, a train pass, or cable TV. If necessary, carry a cheat
sheet in your wallet or on your cell phone. If you find a multi-stroked
kanji particularly difficult to produce, write that character in hiragana.
When writing your return address on the back of an envelope, do so horizontally, since the traditional vertical form is more challenging to space properly. Don’t let an inability to address the envelope in Japanese derail your intensive practice plan. Simply write the address on the front in romaji and yours on the back in Japanese.
If you are a city dweller, you can usually omit the name of your prefecture (ken, 県). After writing your seven-digit post code (often preceded by the symbol 〒), begin with the name of your city, including its proper suffix: 都 (-to, metropolis, used only for Tokyo, 東京都); 府 (-fu, urban prefecture, only for Osaka, 大阪府 and Kyoto, 京都府); or 市 (-shi, city, for all other Japanese cities, e.g., 広島市 Hiroshima-shi).
There are no spaces between characters in Japanese addresses. The city is followed by the name of the ward with its suffix 区 (-ku, e.g., 中区, Naka-ku, Central Ward). The remainder of the address-- comprised
of area names instead of streets-- is next, with the apartment building
and number (when appropriate) falling at the end. Numbers in addresses
are commonly written with Arabic numerals but kanji may also be used. Here’s
a typical city address: 732-0026広島市東区中山3-6サンハイツ103 (Hiroshima-shi
Higashi-ku Nakayama 3-6, Sun Heights 103)
Addresses outside of cities begin with the prefecture followed by names of rural localities with their proper suffixes: 郡 (-gun, county), then 町 (-machi or -cho, town) or 村 (-mura or -son, village). For example: 470-0162愛知県愛知郡東郷町春木46 (Aichi-ken Aichi-gun Togo-cho Haruki 46)
While romaji manifestations of addresses may be written in English order (with apartment number first) or in Japanese order (with prefecture or city first), thus inviting confusion among Japanese people, addresses written in Japanese are always written in the same order.
Japanese place names have a deserved bad rap for being difficult to pronounce. Since many pronunciations deviate from the standard on (音, Chinese-derived) and kun (訓, native-Japanese) readings, even Japanese people struggle with them.
The good news is that you do not need to know the pronunciation of an address
in order to write it by hand. Once you have mastered your own address and
are ready to try others, you can access any address in Japan by typing
in its postal code at http://postcode.goo.ne.jp.
I know from personal experience that putting childlike first attempts at
written Japanese into the public eye can be a real ego-blower for foreign
adults. But learning to write your own address in Japanese-- instead of
depending on a spouse/friend/ coworker/shop clerk to do the job for you
when romaji will not suffice-- is a symbolic first step toward becoming
an independent, literate adult in your adopted land.
QUIZ
Many place name-kanji fall outside the 1,945 general-use kanji, but a surprising
number are kanji learned by Japanese first-through-third-graders, including
those comprising the following Tokyo place-names. First, looking at the
English key words, try to write the places in kanji, and then match romaji
with kanji versions.
1. Me-guro (eye-black)
2. Oo-ta (big-rice paddy)
3. Ro-ppon-gi (six-counter for trees- trees)
4. Bun-kyou (writing-capital)
5. Shina-gawa (goods-river)
6. A-dachi (leg-stand)
7. Aki-ha-bara (autumn-leaves-plain)
8. Ue-no (above-field)
An excellent introduction to the Japanese addressing system is here.
New to KanjiClinic.com? Start reading archived columns here. (Column #1, "Don't despair--you can put an end to kanji chaos")
a. 六本木 b.足立 c.上野 d.文京 e.目黒 f.秋葉原 g.品川 h.大田
Answers: 1.e 2.h 3.a 4.d 5.g 6.b 7.f 8.c