The announcements at JR main stations will be made in 4 languages?

According to the news I read the other day, the announcements at JR main stations in Japan seem to be basically made in four languages in the near future.

One of the biggest reasons is to provide travel information (Shinkansen, train, etc.) to foreigners more smoothly including at the time of a disaster, and it seems to be made in English, Chinese, Korean as well as Japanese. Also it seems that it’s been considered to update the operation information on the website every 30 minutes.

When the typhoon No.21 came in September 2018, some foreign visitors were isolated at the Kansai International Airport due to inadequate information transmission. I think the response has been required to avoid this kind of trouble to be never happen again.

Recently, the number of foreign visitors in Japan has been enormously growing, however, there are very few information in non-Japanese languages, I can see it’s really hard for the visitors.

Especially the Japanese railroad system is not very simple, and I think it is also necessary to get more station staff who can speak foreign languages ​​as well as non-Japanese station announcements. Also I think it’s a good idea to recruit volunteers who can speak languages.

Source: Yomiuri Shinbun