I can think of two things. Either the katakana 'te' in which the vertical line of the T is a bit curved to the left.
Or it's a postal marker, which is like a regular T with a line above it.
It's a little confusing since Japanese addresses are arranged more or less in quadrants, not hierarchically or linearly like here in the US. But the 丁 symbol is basically the "cho" in "chome" which is like the subdistrict or suburb of a ward in metropolitan areas. I don't think you don't really need it though since that is what the first group of numbers stands for anyway (the second narrowing it down to a city block and the third to the individual residence).
I have spent a lot of time looking for people in Okinawa and I find that the easiest way to find some one is to go to the police station for most homes do not have a house number. The police station has a map of the area with all the houses on it, they have a book with all the people that live in their area that have registered with them.
So my take on this is something like the US + 4 zip code.
Jerry F. Barnes
Olympia, WA, USA
home.att.net/~jf-barnes/okinawa.html
I have spent a lot of time looking for people in Okinawa and I find that the easiest way to find some one is to go to the police station for most homes do not have a house number. The police station has a map of the area with all the houses on it, they have a book with all the people that live in their area that have registered with them.
So my take on this is something like the US + 4 zip code.
Yes, I've heard that for small towns or rural areas there may be only one number used designating the section of the town or village. It makes sense in a way since house numbers are based on the order in which they're built, chronologically rather than spatially, so getting mail there would require a map with the coordinates in any case.