Chichibu Railway's Kumagaya Station platform is written only in Japanese, not friendly to foreign visitors

Ever since it became commonplace to connect to the Internet via a smartphone even when abroad, the way I travel has changed dramatically. Even in an unfamiliar town, I can open Google Maps to find out where I am and which train or bus I should take. Since I feel the same way when I go abroad, I am sure that people from overseas would feel the same way when they come to Japan. As a result of the expansion of the range of activities that individual travelers can freely do without guides or guidebooks, foreign travelers can be found in places where one wonders what they are doing there.

At Kumagaya Station on the Chichibu Railway line, where I arrived on this day, there was a foreign traveler wandering around with a smartphone in his hand. He was staring at his phone and worrying. Although smartphones have lowered the hurdle for travelers, there are still times when the hurdle is high, and that is when the destination is written only in the local language. If the destination is not written in Latin characters, it is difficult for people from outside the Chinese character culture to read it. The platform of Kumagaya station of Chichibu Railway is full of Chinese characters. I once had a hard time knowing which bus to take at a bus terminal where only Arabic characters were written. You might think that you can just take a picture with a camera and use translation software, but in a language you don't know, it's hard to tell where the characters begin and end. In the meantime, the young man from Southeast Asia must have given up trying to get answers from his phone. He asked me, who was nearby, which train he should take. Times may have changed, but it is still a good idea to talk to someone instead of using your phone when you are in trouble.

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