The 2018 Winter Olympics concluded in PyeongChang, South Korea, with a remarkable success for Japan; winning 13 medals, its most ever in one Winter Games. Next Olympic Games will be held in Tokyo in 2020, and Japan is expecting to see an increase in the number of foreign tourists visiting Japan for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
However, in the current situation, it is difficult to say that Japan is a “Non-Japanese-Speaker-Friendly-Country”. This is because many of the people in Japan have difficulties communicating in languages other than Japanese. Even though we are seeing more signs and announcements in multiple languages in public, we still see many foreign visitors struggling in town; map in their hand searching for someone who can answer their question or standing in front of the route map in confusion.
Considering the current situation, a smartphone application was developed to support foreign visitors.
“JAPAN Trip Navigator”, a Smartphone Application for Travelers to Japan
An smartphone application for foreigners traveling to Japan was developed jointly by JTB, Navitime Japan, and Microsoft Japan was Released on Feb. 22, 2018. The name of the application is “JAPAN Trip Navigator”.
With a concept of “Digital×Human touch”, JAPAN Trip Navigator will provide its users support service throughout their trip.
This application is developed on “Microsoft Azure”, Microsoft’s cloud platform, using the abundant tourism information of JTB, the application development skills of Navitime Japan, and the function to utilize path tracking information. The App provides its users tourism information, chatbot, and recommendation services using AI. The application is available on iOS only (Application for Android will be released in March 2018). English is the only Language available for now. Other languages will be available serially.
Five Key Features of JAPAN Trip Navigator
- Offers more than 100 different tour model plans
- Offers more than 3,600 tourism spots, enables direct reservations
- You can customize model plans to create your own plan
- Assistant function based on user information
- Chatbot function using AI
Fully Enjoy Japanese Culture; Various Tour Model Plans You Can Select From
When you start the app, various plans such as nature, culture, gourmet, and town walking, from Hokkaido to Okinawa, are shown on the screen. You can also select tour categories or areas to search for a plan you like. You can search for plans by selecting categories such as “See”, “Play” and “Eat”.
Look, I found an interesting plan. “Akihabara Half-Day Tour Plan: see for yourself the city that’s got all the hobbyists googly-eyed!”. Speaking of Japanese Culture, Otaku culture is one of the most famous. If you are sightseeing in Tokyo, Akihabara is a place you can never miss.
This “Akihabara Half – Day Tour” will take you around four places in four hours; from figure shop to maid café (cafe with waiters dressed in cute maid costumes), cosplay costume shop and Gundam Cafe. If you are looking to have an experience of Otaku culture in Japan, this plan may suit you. The app gives you the required time for each plan, which will be helpful when planning for your trip.
You can access the MAP directly from the “plan” page and the app will give you the route from your current location, to your destination (download “NAVITIME for Japan Travel” for this service).
You can also customize the original tour plan.
If you don’t feel like going to Gundam Café and rather prefer going shopping in Electric Town instead, “save” the place you wish to visit, with a name, in the “My Plans” folder. That’s all you need to do. You can arrange the order and the destination of your tour with a simple operation. I named my tour, “Otaku Tour”.
Assistant, Miko, is Still in Preparation
“Miko, the assistant function(chatbot), in a shrine maiden costume will answer your questions.
If you say, “I want to have tempura”, Miko will give you recommendations of places nearby that offers tempura. But for now, it seems like these recommendations are only based on “Ru-Ru-Bu tourism Spot Information”. I tried to find a ramen shop around the route of my customized “Otaku Tour”, but Miko recommended me Tokyo Ramen Street, which is located inside Tokyo Station. Maybe, Miko have not yet gathered enough information. (There was a footnote saying, * This function will be available soon).
It said that the app has an image recognition function, so I sent this picture and asked where this was. Unfortunately, Miko could not give me an answer.
Is it the “assistant function according to the user information” making Miko say this? Miko said to me, “I hope that you can see ninja in Japan”, so I replied, “Where can I meet a ninja?”. Miko recommended me an event called “Tokyo Tower Winter Fantasy”. However, this event showed no signs of ninjas appearing. Not a single word about ninjas was found on the web page for the event.
Although many of its functions are still in preparation, this application will be very helpful for foreigners visiting Japan when all these functions start to perform as originally planned; helping foreign tourists prior to, and throughout the trip. Amount of Data is the key to AI and Deep Learning.Therefore, we can expect it to grow as the amount of input increases and piles up.
Functions that would make the Trip to Japan Better
It was announced in the press release that the app will continue to collaborate with various companies and organizations. So, we can say that we will be seeing more functions in the future.
I felt that there were few functions that should be added to make this application useful; functions that I would appreciate if I were a foreigner who doesn’t understand Japanese at all.
First, a function to show Japanese words in Japanese letters with its proper pronunciations.
Japan is not a country where English is understood everywhere you go. Even if you manage to get to your destination, you would often encounter a situation where you have to communicate using Japanese: paying for the admission fee, ordering at a restaurant, asking about allergies, buying a ticket for a bus/train, asking how to get on the train/bus, asking where the bathroom is, when you are feeling ill, and when going to hospitals.
Even if you cannot understand the everyday conversation, it is very helpful to know phrases and words you can use to at least have yourself understood. “Thank you”, for example, if you see it on your smartphone like “Thank you=ありがとう(Arigato)”, you can say it out loud, or you can just show your smartphone to have others understand you. This will help you get things across.
Second: the collaboration with word of mouth websites such as TripAdvisor, and Tabelog. Being able to see reviews by other foreigners visiting Japan on the app will definitely help when making decisions.
Yes, you can open a different application for each and every thing you do your research on, but wouldn’t it be easier to have an application that does it all seamlessly?
Well, these two are functions that I would like to see the most in the find in this app if I were a foreign tourist visiting Japan.
And one more. Since Microsoft is involved in the application development, why not use the Microsoft HoloLens to have Miko-Chan guide usthrough our touring plan on JAPAN Trip Navigator in Mixed Reality? Surely, this service may come out right away.
The meaning of “OMOTENASHI”, word used to describe Japanese hospitality, is not just proving outstanding hospitality; as the original meaning is to entertain guests wholeheartedly. The meaning of the word goes a lot deeper. Visit Japan and find out the true sense of the “OMOTENASHI”.
● “JAPAN Trip Navigator” web: http://www.jtb.co.jp/inbound/appli/index.asp
●Download App. URL: https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1340750911?mt=8