What do I have to do as a member of the chōkai (neighborhood association)? I'm expecting a baby. What do I need to do at city hall? Where can I use Wi-Fi services? I want to know how to use a fire extinguisher!
The roughly 20,000 foreign residents in Tokyo's city of Minato have many such questions. Whether they have lived in Japan for a few months or decades, their questions are not always easy to answer. On top of this, residents usually want answers quickly instead of visiting a city hall. In some cases, they may not even know whom to ask.
Minato City Hall has created a solution. It has established a service for, basically, anybody to ask questions and have artificial intelligence answer right away in English and easy Japanese, depending on what users choose.