Hey guys!
Today is just me making a video by myself.
And I have another issue that's in the news
to talk to you guys about.
You may have heard of it, if you haven't,
the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan aka GSI
which is essentially just Japan's like mapmakers
have released a new set of icons
to be used on Japanese maps for foreigners.
And you may be wondering, "Okay Rachel why do I care?"
At least one of the symbols that they're changing is
kinda controversial in a way,
and I was going to talk to you guys about it
at some point and I figured now is as good a time as ever.
So to give you guys a little bit of background
on why they're doing this,
Japan is hosting the Olympics in 2020
so they've really been trying to globalize the country
more and make it more foreigner friendly.
Some of the symbols that they use on maps right now
are very Japanese specific.
So one thing they've been doing over the past couple years
is they've been conducting surveys and interviews of
foreigners, who are like exchange students
or, people who work at embassies here
or even just tourists
and they've been showing them several different
symbols on the Japanese maps and
asking them how easy it is to understand them.
And so, that's where they've come up with these
new symbols that they just released.
They didn't just make it out of nowhere and been
these are the symbols we're picking!
They've actually been doing a lot of work and research
trying to figure out what the absolute best symbols
would be for foreigners.
You can find their whole report on their website
and I'll link to it down below if you guys wanna check it out.
They go into great detail on everything they've done.
Obviously it's in Japanese so, um
if you don't speak Japanese you can still understand
some of it just by looking at the pictures and the
numbers and stuff.
So for example one symbol that Japan has traditionally
been using on their maps is an H in a circle
which stands for hotel.
However for a lot of foreigners we may see that as
something like hospital or for me personally,
helicopter pad!
That's what I imagine.
They've conducted several levels of surveys
but the most recent survey
they show the original symbol plus a new one
which shows a person sleeping in a bed with a lamp
and asked which one of these is more understandable
as meaning a hotel.
And overall 61% of people said
the person sleeping in the bed is much easier
symbol to understand,
whereas only 18% of people said
ah yeah I can get hotel from the H in the circle.
So the little sleepy bed man symbol is one of the
new symbols that they're proposing be used.
Another symbol probably one of the most difficult
symbols for non-Japanese people to understand
is the original police-box symbol in Japan. It's just an X.
So if we saw an X on a map I would think like,
Treasure? Buried treasure here or something?
I wouldn't really know what it was.
Actually I didn't even know this was a police-box symbol
so I guess I suck at living in Japan because
I never learned that.
Here you can see that only 4% of people said
they understand an X whereas
they have a little sheriff star,
27% of people said that was okay
and then like a little police officer,
and 33% of people said that was
the most easily understandable symbol.
And one thing they've done is write down comments
so of course they have a more complete understanding
of why people voted the way they did.
So for this police-box symbol, someone from Sweden
said X makes no sense.
Someone from Germany said number 2 is better but
it's kinda complicated.
Another one of the symbols that they're changing is the
symbol for postbox, and the symbol for postbox here is
the Katakana "te" in a circle,
which we obviously don't use abroad.
So they've proposed changing it to just a letter.
Most people made comments like
foreigners who haven't been to Japan aren't
gonna understand this symbol,
which I think is also pretty true.
So let's move on to the number one symbol
that people are debating right now.
Whereas all the other symbols that they're proposing
changing I completely understand the new symbol
that they proposed and I think honestly a lot of those
will really help foreigners who are coming here,
this symbol is debatable,
and that would be the swastika.
I'm sure most of you know this,
but if you don't, the swastika was originally
a Hindu, Buddhist symbol. It may have been
used for other things even before that but it's
thousands and thousands of years old
so this is a very, like sacred, religous symbol
that has been around for a long time
before it was adopted by Nazis and then like,
the whole image of it was completely destroyed.
But whereas in the West we don't have
a lot of Buddhism and Hinduism, so we're not very
familiar with that history of the swastika.
Here in Japan, there are a lot of Buddhist temples,
and a lot of Japanese people are partially Buddhist,
so they're extremely familiar with this symbol,
and if they see the swastika their first thoughts
are going to go to Buddhism and not to
Nazism like a lot of foreigners would.
If you've been to Japan and you've used Google Maps to
look up temples to go to, you've seen this symbol
all the time, sometimes you'll actually see it
at the temple themselves.
And so if you're not familiar with it,
some foreigners can get confused and maybe kind of offended.
But this is the one symbol that I
personally, I think it's really sad that they would
have to change this symbol because it has such,
intense, religious history to it.
I mean,
I feel like we're losing to the bad guys,
like why should the Nazis still be winning at something?
It's not fair that they took this symbol
and then made it something horrible.
I would prefer that they left it as a swastika
because if a foreigner comes to Japan
and they don't know what it is,
then that's a really good opportunity to educate them about it,
and that way we don't have to lose this symbol
to the Nazis.
I can understand why they would want to change it
for foreigners who don't know about Buddhism
or Hindusim, because even if you put
a huge sign at every swastika in Japan
that says "This is a Buddhist symbol,
it's a sacred symbol that has been around for
two thousand years, it has nothing to do with Nazism or anything."
You're still not going to teach everyone about it.
I mean you guys probably spell my name incorrectly
more often than correctly,
and it's the name of our channel!
So, there's no way to teach everyone something.
But still I don't think it would hurt to try.
But either way you know it's their decision to make and
none of these symbols have actually been finalized yet
these are still just the proposed symbols,
so it'll be later this year that they actually
make the announcement of which symbols for sure
they will be adding to maps for foreigners.
And by the way these are all just symbols that they're
changing for maps for foreigners.
They're not using these on maps for Japanese people yet.
All in all they've proposed 18 new symbols for foreigners
and they've also looked at things like
how they should spell things on maps
to make it more easily understandable.
So for example they're trying to figure out
the best way to label a shrine.
The word for shrine in Japanese is jinja
so they've been saying should I call it like
a jinja and shrine? Or should I just call it shrine? Should I just call it jinja?
So they've really been doing their due diligence
on conducting research to figure out what the absolute
best way to label maps for foreigners is,
and I give them a hand for that because
that's a lot of work that goes into that
so I think they've been doing a really great job.
Despite how controversial some of these changes are
I understand what they're doing and
I appreciate all the work that they're putting into it.
And I do think it'll be really helpful for new foreigners
who'll be coming into the country who don't have a lot of
background knowledge about Japan,
especially as we get closer to the Olympics.
So, anyway, let me know what you guys think
about these new symbols and especially what you think
about the swastika because that's kinda the big one and,
I'm still kinda hoping that they might leave the original one,
but I understand both sides to it so.
Anyway thanks for watching guys I'll see you later.
Bye!