Gov't to bolster steps to help foreigners in event of massive Tokyo quake

The irony! At the bottom of this article was following ad : How to Sell Property in Japan: Is 2019 the Time to Sell?

You know if this concentrated effort to assist foreigners in Japan continues AFTER the Olympics I will openly stop criticizing the government here for all this BS that they have been putting out before them!

Up until now there has been very little support or efforts made in this area, and with a government goal of 40 MILLION tourists over the next few years, they MUST improve communications and services for foreigners, beyond the "This is a pen" type of English!

damn another time that I agree with yubaru. and how do they plan to do all this beefing up BS before 2020?

The transport ministry plans to strengthen measures to help foreign visitors in the event of a massive earthquake in Tokyo ahead of the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics.

Since majority of visitors of Olympic are foreigners this is is something they should do as a host nation.

and that in the worst case, the quake could kill up to 23,000 people and destroy 610,000 buildings.

If you have a tsunami like back in 2011- especially say, during rush hour, and the water crashes into the underground, its possible that ALOT MORE than 23,000 could die.

I bet there will be much better English language information available following a disaster in Tokyo or Kyoto than Mandarin or Korean language information. The same goes when flights get shut down, like at Chitose earlier this month. Almost all tourist promotion videos I've seen or programmes on NHK World also use Westerners, not other Asians.

Japan has many problems, work-life balance, gender issues, environmental and economic sustainability, regional tensions, etc. but I think handles natural disasters quite well. You do not see Katrina level chaos in Japan. The response to Fukushima was terrible, but that was an industrial accident, meaning that there were well-connected people who had responsibility they wanted to shirk. For actual natural disasters, this is not the case, and the country usually responds well. My main criticism is that it would be far more sensible to decentralize the country to avoid excessive damage from any single disaster.

Out of concern that masses of people will congregate at shelters near the Olympic venue areas

"concern"? isn't that what the govt. wants them to do? Isn't that what people will be directed to do, if they are out and about during an earthquake? Surely that word should be "the knowledge".

Anyway, at least it is being thought about, which is better than not I suppose.

*"The ministry will beef up airports and railways' quake resiliency to ensure the rapid return of foreign visitors."*

Does that mean they will an extra train for the rapid return to my home in Saitama? "Return" seems to be the key word here.