Quick Reference

Meaning & Definition

住所 (juusho) is the everyday Japanese word for an address — the full set of location details you give when someone asks where you live or where a package should be sent. It turns up constantly in daily life in Japan, from delivery slips and loyalty-card signups to city-hall paperwork.

住所 refers specifically to a residential or postal address: the complete string that pinpoints one building, not just a general neighborhood. A full 住所 is read from the largest unit down to the smallest — prefecture (都道府県), then city or ward (市区町村), then district, block and lot numbers (丁目・番地・号), and finally the building name and room number. This ‘big-to-small’ ordering is the exact reverse of an English address, and it is usually the first thing that trips learners up.

In conversation 住所 is neutral and fits every register; you change the politeness of the words around it rather than swapping the word itself. A friend might say 住所教えて (juusho oshiete, ‘tell me your address’), while a clerk or official uses the polite ご住所 (go-juusho) together with 〜をお願いします. There is no separate casual or slangy word that replaces 住所.

It helps to separate 住所 from a few close neighbors. 番地 (banchi) is only the block-and-lot number, a single piece inside a full 住所. 所在地 (shozaichi) is the ‘location’ of a company, office, or facility rather than a person’s home. 宛先 (atesaki) is the ‘addressee/destination’ written on mail, which bundles the recipient’s name together with their 住所. Reaching for 住所 when you actually mean just the lot number — or the other way round — is a very common slip.

How to Use It

Learners often try to give a Japanese 住所 in English word order, starting from the building number. Japanese addresses generally have no street names at all; they use nested blocks (丁目 chōme, 番 ban, 号 gō) instead, so it pays to practice reciting your own address from the prefecture downward.

Watch the reading, too. The 住 here is not read ‘sumu’ (to live) as it is in 住む; in this compound it becomes juu, giving juusho — never ‘sumisho’.

Finally, official forms often ask for more than one kind of address. 現住所 (genjuusho) is your ‘current address’, while 本籍 (honseki) is the ‘registered family domicile’ and may be somewhere you have never lived. They look similar on a form but mean different things, so read the labels carefully before you write.

Example Sentences

Cultural Context

Japan’s addressing system is famously different from the street-based systems common in the West. Except in a handful of cities such as Kyoto and parts of Sapporo, streets are usually not named; instead the country is divided into nested areas that end in a 丁目 (chōme, district), 番 (ban, block) and 号 (gō, lot). A 住所 is therefore a set of numbers that zooms in step by step, which is why even taxi drivers and delivery workers often rely on landmarks and area maps rather than the address alone.

A 住所 is also a legal anchor. Residents are tied to their address through the 住民票 (juuminhyou, resident record) kept at city hall, and moving requires filing a 転出届 and 転入届 to update it. Much of everyday administrative life — receiving official mail, registering a bank account, enrolling in national health insurance — depends on having a properly registered 住所, so the word carries more bureaucratic weight than the casual English ‘address’ suggests.

For newcomers, the reversed order and the missing street names make giving a 住所 out loud surprisingly stressful at first, and many people simply show the address on their phone. The flip side is a warm custom: exchanging 住所 so you can send 年賀状 (nengajou, New Year postcards) remains a small but meaningful way that friends, relatives and coworkers stay connected across the year.

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