Hi Guys,
Last Sunday, we had our first Englishnization meetup in Shibuya, Tokyo. You can check out the meetup page here: Map Englishnization in Tokyo
All of us assembled near the famous Hachiko Statue in Shibuya, Tokyo. I want to thank @Yutaro san, @Anzu san, Atul and Ayush who joined me for this meetup.
We divided our group into 2 smaller groups so we had a good mix of native English and Japanese speaker. This way we could cover more places as well. The idea was to cover the restaurants first as food is the most basic requirement for the tourists. We faced an issue that Japanese Local Guides could not see the ‘Add English name’ functionality in the Maps as their primary language was set as Japanese. Changing their language to English would have meant that they will not be able to comfortably use their phones. So we decided that English speaking guides can add English names and Japanese speaking guides can add pictures containing English information of the business such as menu, boards etc.
Before the meet, I had prepared a pamphlet to be distributed to business owners so they can understand why Englishnization is important for their business. I had briefly described how they can prepare their business for the 10 Million tourists visiting during the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. For the sake of convenience, I put the same text in English and Japanese.
We distributed these pamphlets to the businesses which did not have an English board outside as the tourist will face difficulty in recognizing the correct place even if we added the name on Maps. With the pamphlet, it was easier to explain why Englishnization is important and how it can impact their business.
Another issue we faced was that many businesses or restaurants in Tokyo are inside other buildings. But we could not edit the building names. So that information primarily remained in Japanese. As you can see in the screenshot, there’s no option to edit or add information for buildings like this. (I checked the 3 dot menu as well for hidden options but there truly was none). I think maybe Google Maps gathers this data from 3rd party data providers and hence cannot allow local guides to edit this data due to contractual issues.
We spent more time adding the English information like name, floor information, pictures of the restaurant and building boards. In some cases, we also added some places which didn’t exist on maps before.
We gathered back again near the Hachiko statue after 1 hour. Unfortunately, we were able to add information for around 30 places only. While I will continue to add English information for places, I guess we need more local guides to join in this initiative to create a bigger impact.
Luckily for us, we also got to see an early Sakura bloom in Shibuya. This is the Sakura season in Tokyo and I look forward to my first full bloom.
Afterwards, we went for lunch at a Mexican restaurant called Cafe Habana in Shibuya. The interiors were tastefully done and we thoroughly enjoyed our delicious meals.
After the meal, we took some pictures and bid goodbye till we meet next time.
I would request other local guides in Japan to connect with me so we can have more such meetups in the future in all areas of Japan. We definitely need more English information on Google Maps to support English speaking tourists. I would also appreciate if someone can connect me with the relevant Googlers so we can work out a more scalable way to prepare Google Maps for the Tokyo 2020 together.
To everyone who supported me for this meetup:
Doumo Arigatou Gozaimasu (Thank you so much)
どうもありがとうございます
