As the result of these efforts, Japan was raked top among Asian countries in the number of international conferences held for the third consecutive year, and holding of a series of large conferences in Japan was decided, including the 2016 annual world conference of the International Association for Impact Assessment (expected number of participants: 1,000) and the 25th General Conference of the International Council of Museums (expected number of participants: 2,500) in 2019.

## 6 Acceleration of Tourism Promotion, Having Post-Rio de Janeiro Games, 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games and Post-2020 Games in Sight

(1) Visit Japan promotion taking the opportunities of large-scale international sports games

We participated in PRESENTING JAPAN, a public and private sector joint event, from October 24 through 30, 2015, taking the opportunity of the 2015 Rugby World Cup held in the UK. Effective visit Japan promotion was carried out to deepen the understanding of Japan by disseminating Japan’s travel information to rugby fans and the media gathered from all over the world by such means as airing videos for promoting visit to Japan and setting up a tourism concierge booth.

(2) Accelerating a barrier-free environment taking the opportunity of hosting Olympic and Paralympic Games

We have enhanced activities aimed at creating an environment in which all people, including elderly people and people with disabilities, can enjoy touring. These activities included provision of integrated regional consultation services in multiple languages. In addition, efforts were made to spread the universal tourism further, conducting surveys and reviews on travelers with small children and expectant mothers.

(3) Establishing an environment to receive foreign tourists who visit Japan for Olympic and Paralympic Games

In coordination with the Council of Multilingual Services for the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games, we have improved and enhanced multilingual services and shared cases to be followed.

Also, the Toei Subway and others started the provision of the free public wireless LAN environment from FY 2015 due to encouragement leveraging the framework of the Free Public Wireless LAN Development Promotion Conference. From FY 2016, the provision will start in other places including the Tokyo Metro.

At Tokyo Station, surveys were conducted on the status regarding the ease of understanding and continuity of information signs: a review meeting to examine improvements from the viewpoints of people with restricted movement such as those who have disabilities was held, and measures to improve information signs were put together.

In January 2016, the Tokyo section of the committee for appropriate road signs formulated for Tokyo the Policy on Road Sign Improvements toward Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and started working on improvements of road signs in Akihabara and Kamata (around Haneda Airport) in February of the same year. This included addition of English to signs, use of route numbers, use of pictograms and reversed characters, indication of common names and bigger font sizes, and enhancement of signs for pedestrians. In the neighboring prefectures (Chiba, Saitama, and Kanagawa), policies on road sign improvement were discussed.