This was a chome (3-block) sign near the post office that was

just up the street from my hotel in Itabashi, western Tokyo. Most streets in Japan do not

have names except for the large main ones in the downtown area of the large cities. Instead,

people locate buildings by going to the chome and then asking people where a particular

building is. Talk about 'community'! "Kita" means north and "ku" means "area" or "town"

(similar to the Japanese word "cho"), so "Kita-ku" mean "North area" or "North" section.

Most Japanese words are compound words so once you learn a few Japanese words written

in Romajii, you can easily make out longer compound words - and make a guess even if you

don't know all the words. For example the word "Takinogawa" is a compound word containing "Taki", "no",

and "gawa". Since I know that "no" means "of" or "belonging to" and that "gawa" means river I know that

"Takinogawa" means "something river". So all I have to do is go look up the word for "Taki" and I know what

"Takinogawa" means. This makes Romajii extremely easy to read and figure out even if you don't speak a lot

of Japanese. The directional words in Japanese are easy:

Kita - North

Megumi - South

Higashi - East

Nishi - West