Japan to introduce foreigner-friendly bus services ahead of 2020 Games

The phrase "foreigner friendly" is very disturbing to me. It really highlights the how Japanese truly feel about the rest of the world.

I wonder what excuse businesses and government are going to come up with AFTER the Olympics to waste money?

How about making it clear whether you 1. take a ticket when you get on, or 2. use a suica when you get on, or 3. use a suica when you get off. Whenever I use a new bus line, the payment method is always different and not clearly marked. Also, signs explaining whether you get on/off in the front or middle would be helpful too.

i wonder how the millions of foreigners that have been to Japan ever coped?

I was interpreter interviewer for an internet program at the first Inbound Tourism Expo hosted by Nikkei a couple of years ago. Various companies exhibited their smartphone apps in Chinese Korean and English but no one at any of the 50 or so companies spoke any of these languages except a few of the staff at the JAL and ANA booths. Seemed to me they all belatedly realized the business opps dealing with foreign tourists and want to get in on the lucrative action but hadn't prepared.

Unless someone knows differently, I don't think the system of transfers from bus route to bus route is available in Japan. For example, in the US one can either get a transfer ticker, or use a prepaid card, to transfer from a route A bus, to a route B bus, within a fixed period of time (typically two hours) without paying an additional fare.

I think Japan requires a new fare for each bus route.

For example, in the US one can....

Unlikely. There is very little in the US that is consistent or standardized throughout the entire country.

What we need is augmented reality and voice based information system and automatic route planning intelligent mapping agents. Robotics can do better job than the govt.

Is this actually being done anywhere? Introducing a load of bleeding edge technology in a short span of time is almost certain to result in chaos.

So if you want to go to adogawa, you have to translate the English to Japanese, then the Japanese to alphanumeric?

Totally disappointing, and complete failure on the part of the outdated govt, I am not talking about their average ege, I am talking about AI. It is also disrespectable to assume that foreigners only at the level of elementary school and can only understand numerics, that isn't friendly attitude at all. What we need is augmented reality and voice based information system and automatic route planning intelligent mapping agents. Robotics can do better job than the govt.