As the continuing tourism boom packs public transportation systems nationwide, developing multilingual emergency alerts is becoming a top priority.
In public transport emergencies, there are often no emergency announcements in English or other languages, leaving both foreign passengers and the Japanese staff in charge of assisting them in a crisis.
In one case, when a strong earthquake jolted Osaka Prefecture last month, a quick-thinking Japanese commuter who spoke English helped ensure that a bad situation on the Hanshin Electric Railway Co. train did not get worse.