New multilingual Kokusai Street map now available

To meet needs of an increasing number of foreign tourists, the Naha City Kokusai Shopping Street Promotion Association has created a map of Kokusai Street in English, Chinese, and Korean, illustrating the street and main stores along it using illustrations that are easily recognized. The executive director of the association says, “Please drop by on Kokusai Street with this map.”

The number of foreign tourists visiting Okinawa in 2016 exceeded 2 million for the first time. Kokusai Street has come to welcome a lot of foreign tourists over the last two years. There has been a demand for a multilingual map from association members. Accordingly, they have discussed about creating one since spring of 2016, and the association finally completed it at the end of January, using a subsidy from Naha City.

Most of existing maps feature areas like Shuri Castle, however the Kokusai Street map positions the cruise ship terminal at the bottom and the Kokusai Street in the center of the map making it easy for visitors arriving on cruise liners to understan the way to access the Kokusai Street.

In addition, the map divides Kokusai Street into four parts; Saionbashi, Oodori, Chuo Dori, and Kenchoumae, using different colors for easy recognition. Benches along the street are painted in the same colors, so one can recognize in which part of the street one is from the color without even knowing the street name.

On the map, only a minimum number of shop names on Kokusai Street are written to make it clearer, but all nearby hotels are on the map in order to show how to get to Kokusai Street for visitors staying at hotels.

220,000 copies of the map were printed and distributed to the stores, hotels, monorail stations and rent-a-car outlets on Kokusai Street, in addition to the Convention Bureau offices in South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Thailand.

GoldDisc

21:18 28 Mar , 2024