Addresses in Kanji or Kana?

Hello

Apologies for my ignorance, but are Japanese addresses typically written using Kanji or Kana?

Intuitively I'd have thought the former, but if not are there any general rules beyond it depending on who's writing it?

Many thanks,
S

Kanji or Hiragana. Katakana is for foreign words and names.

Japanese street addresses are written in combination of kanji, hiragana, and katakana as they are applicable to the individual prefecture, city, town names.

For an address in Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo prefecture, for example, you start off with 東京都 ("Tokyo to" = Tokyo prefecture in kanji)　中央区 ("Chuo-ku" Chuo ward, all in kanji), 銀座 ("Ginza" in kanji).

But there are some city names such as Saitama city in Saitama prefecture - while the prefecture name is written in kanji like 埼玉県 ("Saitama ken, Saitama prefecture, all in kanji) the city name is *officially* written like さいたま市 ("Saitama" in hiragana, and "shi" = city, in kanji).

I don't know any city or town name that is written in katakana - as explained by the earlier poster, katakana would be for imported/foreign words. But there are apartment/office building names given in katakana, so that would be written in katakana.

There are no rules depending on who is writing it... young schoolkids not knowing many kanji yet but trying to send a letter to a friend/teacher can write in hiragana. If you are wondering how, as a non-local you might write addresses, you can write it out in "romaji," which is a romanized writing system. Is this what you were wondering about?

I use romaji when sending mail purely because I am not 100% confident with my Kanji and Hiragana skills.

Although the post office would be able to work out what I mean if I make a small mistake, it's also much easier for me just to use romanji.

From what I gather, the postal code contains all the relevant information, so as long as you have the postalcode correct, it gets sorted out pretty well. Thats how foreign correspondents get through pretty easily, as the postal code number already contains which city, district etc something should be delivered to. The last parts are apartment/house block/number. Person's name is important to a degree, but i get mail all the time for someone who doesn't live here anymore, even though i have notified the post office of this.

Thank you for the excellent responses. That's very useful indeed.

I was interested from a Transliteration perspective as to whether a Romaji representation would have a direct Kana and a direct Kanji version. Then whether one was preferable to the other.

It sounds more complicated than that if a combination of Kanji, Hirigana and Katakana are used in the same address though!

A combination of kanji, hiragana and katakana is used for all Japanese writing. Addresses are no different.