Japan Pins Tourism Hopes on PDA

Sammy at Palm Addict writes "According to Australia News.com, Japan will start lending PDA's to foreign visitors to help tourists get to grips with the country. The aim is to make Japan more attractive to foreign tourists, who are often put off by the country's language barrier. The PDA's will be loaded with travel information and translation services as part of a tourism promotion scheme. "Japan's tourism authority will lend the PDAs containing Chinese, Korean and English software, to selected tourists who land at Narita Airport near Tokyo from February through March to test the response" Japan's transport ministry said."

Comments

Opt in web site

[AthenianGadfly]

Here's the project's site that looks like it offers a way to be involved in the program, as well as some more detailed information "straight from the source" on what the PDAs will have loaded on them.

http://www.narita-airport.or.jp/e-navi/howto.html

katakana

[augnober]

A guide to katakana (Japanese phonetic characters for foreign words) would be nice.. Or perhaps a little education campaign about it.

Many of the most important signs are written in katakana, which in essence means they are written in English. There are only 46-or-so basic characters to learn, which you can get a decent handle on by the time you step off the plane. This is more than enough to find hotels (hoteru), order food and drinks off most menus, find restaurants (resutoran), etc.

I knew katakana in Japan and only a few Japanese words. I'm not kidding about how handy it was.

They did the same thing last year

[Chang]

They ran a similar pilot during the same period last year.

From the looks of the website - the devices haven't really changed much.

http://www.narita-airport.jp/e-navi/

They are, however very fun toys even if nothing has changed. I'm planning to be in Japan again in a few months and if they have any available I'll definitely try them out.

First-hand experience this year in Japan

[echocharlie]

I went to Japan for the first time this year as part of a tour group. I also was afraid of the language barrier, even though I actually know a little Japanese and can read a bit. But it was a lot easier than I could have imagined. Many of the people know enough English to answer basic questions, especially the younger people.

At the hotels, all of the staff know quite a bit of English, as well as the staff at all the tourist spots. Mind you, I was in Osaka, not Japan, which should have been less-English friendly but wasn't. Many of the signs are in English on the Highways and in mass transit, so getting around was a piece of cake.

It was certainly easier to get around than I expected, and although I knew a bit of Japanese, I avoided using it (mostly due to my fear of being embarassed for saying something inadvertantly inappropriate). I'd imagine Tokyo would be even more friendly for tourists, and I'd definitely like to go there one day. In short, everyone should consider going there; the language barrier isn't much of one. I think I had a harder time getting around in Europe than I did in Japan.

Re:Why a PDA?

[Hast]

I knew about 350 kanji when I was i Japan this past summer. I still couldn't read what was in a piece of sushi when I was standing in the local kombini (unless there was furigana on it as well). I could of course ask the people in the store but since I didn't really care I just learned some that I liked.

And if you learn kanji in Japan you are expected to know all jyoujou-kanji (1946 IIRC) plus about 500 more that are "common knowledge". But most people know a few more in their work field.

Naturally just because you "know" a kanji doesn't mean you can read or understand a composite that it is included in. Learning the kanji shape and basic meaning is just the first, easy, part. ;-)