Once or twice a week, I drive up from Nakagusuku to Onna. I take the 329 to the 6, cross over to the 58, and head the rest of the way like that. Along this journey, the 329 becomes the 331, and I pass the 81, the 85, the 75, the 20, and the 85 again (???) and so on and so forth.
I used to live in DC, which was pretty grid like with streets running north-south in numerical order and streets running east-west in alphabetical order, so basically you could always kind of tell where you were and where you were going based on checking road signs.
Okinawa has the ocean—-that makes it fairly easy figuring out what side of the island I’m on or what direction I’m heading, but the road network numbers confuse the hell out of me. Is there any rhyme or reason to it, or are they just randomly numbered?? I’m also still grappling with the reason of why streets suddenly change number, or why the same number appears multiple times. I know Japan doesn’t use traditional street names, but I’m still wondering if there’s any order to these numbers for the major roads.
by eaonn