The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) is introducing an expressway “numbering system” to effectuate easy-to-understand road guidance for all expressway users, including foreign visitors to Japan. The system combines expressway route names with route numbers that are independent of local place names and dialects. It is based on the “Proposal for Realization of Expressway Numbering” (report of the Expressway Numbering Exploratory Committee of October 24, 2016).