The different strategies of "block versus street" seem to relate to the way that the corresponding languages function. Japanese is ideographic; it presents ideas in "chunks" which must be apprehended as a gestalt via the right brain, whereas English breaks a concept up into phonetic units, and so is much more analytical and uses the left brain. Of course these "right and left" distinctions are purely statistical, not all brains are organized that way, but you get the point... Most people tend to rely more on one side or the other and thus are either more analytical or more synthetic in their thought processes -- more artistic or scientific, one might say. But I think that it's best to be balanced, with both modes available -- otherwise it's like a bird that only flaps one wing; you tend to go in circles. Maybe there's some way of formulating an address which does not rely on streets or on blocks, but finds a compromise