Japanese Street Addresses and Other Cultural Opposites

I design housing developments (in America, and as part of that process blocks and individual house lots are indeed numbered. So it is possible to ind your house by block and lot number. Usually late in the development process, the city takes over and assigns addresses to the house lots, which becomes it's mailing address. But my tax records lists my property as Fairchild addition section 11, block 13, lot 6.
much more similiar to the japanese style.

You get directions from the conveniently located local police box, of course! They have a whole set of maps expressly for this purpose.

Directions are given by compass, distance and by referencing landmarks. "Take the east exit and turn left. Go three blocks. Turn right at the Takoyaki shop. Wait for the tatoo'd man." That's if your traveling by foot or train. If you have a car then you likely also possess a GPS and needn't worry.

AS for cutlery I side with caveman. Chopsticks are delicate and require practice. They are so designed to enable a person to delicately select a single serving of food and gently place it in ones mouth. A fork/spoon allows anyone (on their first try) to shovel large amounts of virtually anything into the mouth. You don't even have to pay attention to what your eating. Heck with practice you can skip the chewing part altogether... much more efficient.

This is why most directions in Japan start with, "Take the north exit from XX station and turn left at the pharmacy..."

I miss it.

@caveman

They do just fine from what I've seen.

You don't automatically know street name do you? You only learn the ones you need to get to. Streets are the same, you only learn the ones you need to take. Same with comparing a phonetic language to a pictographic one... you simply cannot compare the two.

Impractical cultery? Are you referring to chopsticks? It took a while for me to learn to how use them effectively as a kid, but I did, and still use them today when I have Asian food at lunch.

If you can't adapt to thinking differently, you're probably better off not trying.