We started to publish Japan National Postal Code List in Roman freely.Yeah, we’ve ended sales of this data 🙂
This database will update monthly.File format and some specs, please refer the readme.txt bellow. Enjoy!
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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Latest: https://www.fabrice.co.jp/yubin-converted/yubin-roman.zip
Archives page: https://www.fabrice.co.jp/yubin-converted/archive/
readme.txt
Japan Nationa Postal Code List in Roman ======================================= Files ----- * readme.txt: this file * roman.txt: contains all records, roman characters only. * roman2.txt: contains all records, roman, hiragana, kanji. Base Data --------- The database is based on ken_all.zip which Japan Post Service Co., Ltd. has been publishing for public. You can download it from this direct link. http://www.post.japanpost.jp/zipcode/dl/kogaki/zip/ken_all.zip Japan Post Service Co., Ltd.'s English page is here. http://www.post.japanpost.jp/english/index.html Roman conversion ---------------- Above data file has Japanese kataana value. We convert it into roman programaticaly. Roman representation in Japanese has some ways. Kunrei, Hepburn etc. We use modified Hepburn system of romanization. Format conversion ----------------- Original data file has some ugly specs. For example, one town divided into two or three rows, because of character length. In our conversion that is merged into one row. There is four another specs, but its too difficult to explain in english for us. File format ----------- * First line is title * Column seperator: Tab * Record seperator: CR+LF * Text encoding: UTF-8 * roman.txt Columns 1. row number 2. postal code 3. prefecture code 4. city code 5. town 6. city 7. prefecture 8. area * roman2.txt Columns 1. row number 2. postal code 3. prefecture code 4. city code 5. town 6. city 7. prefecture 8. area 9. town_kana 10. city_kana 11. prefecture_kana 12. area_kana 13. town_kanji 14. city_kanji 15. prefecture_kanji 16. area_kanji * Town column has some special values: 1. "*" means, when there is not a mention. 2. "-" means, in case that street numbers come after the city. * Area division has some alternative ways.
why “Naka-ku, Nagoya-shi” instead of “Nagoya-shi, Naka-ku”?
Hmm…American style. Is it wrong?
For example, when sending a letter usually writes the first city in the case Aichi-ken, Nagoya-shi, Naka-ku.
Province> City> district, in that order.
It is also good such rules. I will take it under advisement.
Thank you.
I personally think the western format being used (“Naka-ku, Nagoya-shi”) is more helpfull, specially for those sending letters from outside Japan.
Thank you. Currently I also think so.
Hi,
I couldn’t find geographic data in this database 🙁
There is no latitude/longitude data for the entries??
>> There is no latitude/longitude data for the entries??
Unfotunately, Yes. You can also get geocoding data from Google Maps API.
Good point. Thanks.
Hello,
I’ve been checking roman version and I have one question about consistency between some district names in the website (http://yubin.senmon.net/en) and the names in the database.
There are some names in the web site with double vowels (‘aa’, ‘ee’, ‘ii’, ‘oo’, ‘uu’) that in the data file have lost one vowel. I’ll write just some examples (hiragana – website – data file)
1) いいしぐん – Iishi-gun – Ishi-gun
2) ひがしいばらきぐん – Higashiibaraki-gun – Higashibaraki-gun
3) みなみまつうらぐん – Minamimatsuura-gun – Minamimatsura-gun
4) しこくちゅうおうし – Shikokuchuuou-shi – Shikokuchuo-shi
5) もおかし – Mooka-shi – Moka-shi
So, I would like to know:
– Why this difference exist?
– Will be the data file updated with the website version?
Thank you very much and, by the way, thanks for publishing this data. It’s very useful.
Hello,
– Why this difference exist?
Japanese romanization has some different rules.
Web site uses ‘KUNREI’ style. Database version uses ‘Hepburn’ style. This difference originates in the historical reason of our site.
There are no technical reasons. But some cultural reasons. It’s a long story 🙂
– Will be the data file updated with the website version?
I am sorry. Currently we have no plans.
But I personally think distributing KUNREI version database should be considered.
Thank you for your help.
Davi asked why addresses were not shown from big to small as is customary in Japan.
In fact, the writing style for international mail was decided by the Bern Convention which Japan joined in 1877. Since then, mail addressed to (or within) Japan in Roman letters has always been done “western style” of small to big.
Another comment was about using kunrei. Kunrei is fine for Japanese to make “roman” words, but Hepburn is by far preferable for use internationally. There are a few problematic romanizations in kunrei that make it “A Bad Idea” for use by non-Japanese. The troublesome bits in kunrei are mainly zya, zyu, zyo, hu, si, tu and ti.
Would it be possible to see the coding for the Hepburn?
Hello. Unfortunately we currently have no plan.
But good news for you. Japan post has been published Hepburn romanized data on their site in Japanese web page!
http://www.post.japanpost.jp/zipcode/dl/roman.html
Unfortunately the data is a little outdated and descriptions are in Japanese.
Try google translate!
I mean you create your file following the Postal Code Hepburn procedure right?
I also did the same but I can’t match it for the Aza.
Hello,
We convert Katakana into roman programaticaly. Hepburn representation in Japanese has some ways. We use modified (for our convinience) Hepburn system of romanization.So our conversion procedure is not *RIGHT*.
If you need *RIGHT* Hepburn texts, you can use Japan Post’s published version. It may be *RIGHT*.
On the other hand, We think our modified Hepburn system of romanization is reasonable on most situations.
Regards.
THANK YOU!