A tsunami warning flashes over live footage of a waterfront area, on a television screen in Sapporo on Dec 9, 2025 following the earthquake. - AFP
SAPPORO: The magnitude 7.5 earthquake that occurred off northeastern Japan recently highlighted the need for Japan to provide safety tips and evacuation information to foreign nationals more effectively, particularly as the country witnesses an inbound tourism boom, Kyodo News reported.
Locals and foreign visitors alike were asked to evacuate as the weather agency issued tsunami warnings for part of the Pacific coast of Hokkaido, as well as Aomori and Iwate prefectures.
Among them, Jose San Juan, a tourist from the Philippines, who received a quake alert via his smartphone while staying at a hotel in Sapporo, said he was unable to evacuate because he did not know where to go.
"Information such as places to evacuate to is not properly delivered to foreigners with great urgency," Mayumi Sakamoto, a professor at the University of Hyogo's Graduate School of Disaster Resilience and Governance, said.
Many of the guests at the JR Inn Hakodate in Hokkaido were from overseas when the area was rocked by the temblor measuring 5 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale of 7, according to a hotel employee.
The hotel instructed guests in Japanese and English to move to the upper floors to avoid a tsunami, but some guests descended to the lobby on the first floor due to confusion.
At another accommodation in Hakodate, relevant information was posted on a whiteboard, but only in Japanese.
A female guest from South Korea said she found a fix by taking pictures of the information using an app that generates translation texts in Korean.
Sakamoto said Japan needs to quickly develop a system to smoothly provide critical information to foreigners by introducing multilingual apps and websites to visitors upon their arrival, among other efforts.
The country received a record 36.87 million visitors from abroad last year, and the number reached 35.54 million in October this year, according to data from the Japan National Tourism Organisation. - Bernama-Kyodo
