In areas where no one wants any misunderstandings, road signs containing English started being installed on July 1 for the flood of foreign visitors expected for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games.
In particular, two types of road signs are being replaced with those containing the equivalent “Stop” and “Slow” in English.
According to the National Police Agency and Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police Department, there were 1.7 million locations in Japan with a sign saying “Tomare” (Stop) as of the end of March 2016. There were about 1,000 locations with signs indicating “Joko” (Slow).
Replacement of the signs with ones containing English will commence from the older ones that were most in need of change.
Of the approximately 140,000 road signs in the Tokyo metropolitan area, priority will be placed on replacing about 35,000 in the vicinity of Olympic and Paralympic venues.
Source: Asahi Image: NHK
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