The government will set up an international voice mail service next April that will allow overseas residents to contact their families and friends in Japan during emergencies, according to the Foreign Ministry.

The ministry decided to set up the system to reduce the flood of calls it receives every time an emergency crops up, including December's tsunami disaster in the Indian Ocean and the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001.

The ministry will first set up the system in the U.S. and Canada, where about 380,000 Japanese residents are registered, and gradually expand it to other regions, they said.

Although the main target of the service is Japanese nationals, non-Japanese residents in Japan can also use the service to listen to recorded messages from family members and friends living abroad, they said.

To use the new system, people in the U.S., for instance, will dial a toll-free number, punch in additional numbers -- such as the birth dates and telephone numbers of the people they want to contact -- and leave a message.

To listen to the messages, people in Japan will call the toll-free number and go through the same process.

"If the system is introduced, people will not need to ask the Foreign Ministry for information . . . they can directly listen to the voices of their families and friends," the official said.

But the system will not let users in Japan record messages targeted at overseas residents.