The Act on Promotion of Inbound Tourism through Enhancing Travel Convenience of Foreign Tourists requires public transport companies to make information available in multiple languages and other means, in the following manner:

Place: Travel facilities, train cars and other locations (ticket gate, station map, fare chart, destinations, name of next station, etc.)

Content: Information in multiple languages and other means (direction indicator, current location, user guidance, rules and restrictions, etc.)

Means: Information made available through text, symbols, diagrams or audio (signage, brochures, etc.)

Language: The standard is Japanese, English and symbols (Chinese and Korean should be added according to regional characteristics).

These are mandated for public transport companies which operate in the sections designated by the JTA Commissioner. The general overview of the process is as follows:

We coordinate "solo walkabout Inspections" which focus on the points of connection in public transport – a system that often serves as the 'face' of Japan and one that comprises multiple transport operators – and evaluate the usability of multilingual signage from a foreign person's standpoint. We believe that the feedback obtained through "solo walkabout inspections" is invaluable on occasions when multiple parties collaborate on facilities improvement and also serve as examples when preparing the infrastructure for receiving international visitors at other large-scale points of connection.