KAWAGOE, Saitama (Jiji Press) — A Tokyo-based nonprofit organization is providing foreign nationals living in Japan with disaster-prevention education using karuta traditional playing cards, in a bid to prevent such people from having trouble getting information in times of disaster due to language barriers.
The program is conducted by WaNavi Japan, registered as a general incorporated association under Japanese law. Japanese words such as “jishin,” meaning earthquakes, and “hinan,” meaning evacuation, are among the disaster-related terms taught in the program.
Motoko Kimura, founder and co-executive director of the NPO, came up with the idea of offering such a program, after seeing her American friend having a hard time obtaining information at the time of the March 2011 massive earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster.
Kimura learned that there is a gap between Japanese people and foreign residents in terms of knowledge about evacuation shelters and wireless disaster information distribution systems.
“I heard that some foreign residents walked alongside the coast to return to their homes because they didn’t understand the meaning of [tsunami alert] sirens,” Kimura said.
In the program using karuta, foreign participants learn disaster-related terms by reading them out loud and picking cards with corresponding illustrations, English translations or kanji characters. By having participants repeatedly play such a game, the program aims to help them become able to understand disaster-related Japanese terms through listening and reading.
At workshops held at the request of such institutions as municipalities, embassies and companies, the NPO introduces to foreign participants an app giving evacuation information in English, among other ways to access necessary information.
Also as part of activities at such workshops, the NPO has participants listen to sample municipality broadcasts calling for evacuation before the arrival of tsunami, in order to check if they actually understand what is being said.
At a workshop held at Tokyo International University in Kawagoe, Saitama Prefecture, Ana Paula Ortiz, a 20-year-old exchange student from Mexico, said that she did not know Japanese words such as “hinan.” She expressed her eagerness to be better prepared for possible disasters.
As foreign workers in Japan are expected to increase after the effectuation in April of the revised immigration control law, which is designed to accept more of such workers in the country to address serious labor shortages, Kimura stressed the importance of education to help foreign residents learn disaster-related vocabularies in Japanese.
“I want people from abroad to learn Japanese disaster-related terms right after their arrival in the country as vocabularies needed for survival,” Kimura said.
