Hi, I’m Shungo, a level-8 local guide in Tokyo. I’ve been posting my reviews on Google Maps for these three years. I actually don’t remember from when I started to share my photos there though, now that the activities on Google Maps Local Guides are routines for me and I really enjoy it.
What Local Guides means to me: Helping people facing new experiences.
Besides my interest in location based services since I got my first smartphone, iPhone 3G, dating back to 2009, I think a reason why I’m contributing to Local Guides is backed by my experience to live and work in a foreign country.
I spent my early 30s in Seoul, South Korea for working. I had never been to Korea before I started working there with frequent long-term stay until my visa approval, and it brought me a sort of impotent feeling. I got to know that Korean language has similar grammar with my mother tongue, Japanese, afterward, but at the first time I visited Seoul, I thought there weren’t any hint for me to guess as every signboard was in Korean language without any alphabet or Chinese characters. We feel worried when we can’t find any understandable information around us.
I owed so much to my local coworkers and friends regarding my life there. Besides my working time, my friends helped me a lot so that I was able to rent an apartment, ask a supermarket clerk to mince meat, to know the polite ways to go to wedding parties and funerals, and so on. I really remember the day when a policeman visited my apartment in the morning and asked many questions to me. My language teacher later let me know that it seemed that a previous tenant of my apartment had not fulfilled his military service obligation, but it was a very shocking morning that I remember clearly after 7 or 8 years.
After coming back to my home country, I’ve been working with coworkers from foreign countries, and now I can understand their uneasiness or inconvenience to live and work abroad, at least to some extent. So I’m trying to help them as my ex-coworkers used to help me.
My contribution to Local Guides has same foundation. I’m posting reviews in English for venues in Japan to provide travelers from abroad with live information, on the other hand, posting in Japanese for places outside Japan to share my experience during my trip with Japanese travelers. Of course sometimes I write reviews in Japanese for places in my neighborhood as it may be more helpful for my neighbors, but my basic stance in Local Guides program is to help people with providing information in understandable ways.
I’m very happy if my information helps someone as I believe it must be what shared knowledge can achieve in this socially and technologically connected world.