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by bombcar 421 days ago
I wonder if trying to support strange international address styles (like cities where the numbers on the street are in order of building permit issued, not ordinal from a center point) and/or trying to scan imagery for addresses is confusing it.

The fact it gets the street wrong indicates a tokenization issue somewhere.

Any evidence it happens to non-numeric streets like Main Street or Martin Luther Blvd, or is it only 10th st types of things?

2 comments

I was on Seoul for 18 months, and despite significant study, I have, never been able to decode their system despite at least 100 requests for some insights.
>like cities where the numbers on the street are in order of building permit issued

Holy shit what an absolutely needless nightmare of a system. How do you expect people to find anything like that?

Japan is even worse than that, as they don't even use street names. The specific details depend on the municipality, but in summary:

- Municipalities are divided hierarchically into named neighborhoods, districts, wards, or "sections" (字/"aza", I don't know the correct translation). A single municipality might combine different kinds of divisions for historical reasons.

- Those are then divided into numbered blocks, plots, and buildings. The numbers are assigned in chronological order, and are rarely spatially sequential.

All in all, the system is extremely confusing, and the chaotic urban "planning" of most Japanese cities doesn't help. So how do people move around? They use maps; in the big cities like Tokyo there are street maps in all the major areas, otherwise you use your smartphone.

Hey, at least they have numbers!

In some areas the streets have no names, nor do the buildings have numbers.

If there’s three streets and twelve houses, why do you need any of those?