In January the Kyoto Prefectural Government introduced a service
which they have called "Charisma Navigation". This service is available free for the first three months. It enables
visitors to Kyoto to borrow a PDA-like device to help them see the
sights of Japans most renowned tourist destination. The service is
available in Korean and English. A similar service is scheduled to
start early this year in Tokyo.
You can apply online before you arrive.
The English site is here.
And the Korean site is here.
From the Charisma Navigation site:
Kyoto, Japan’s prime tourist destination.
Annually, 67 million people visit Kyoto, but only 800 000 are from
overseas. Language is an obstacle for many foreign tourists, limiting
their ability to get information or access destinations. Guidebooks and
maps provide only limited information, and are inconvenient to use
while en route.To solve this inconvenience for foreign visitors, the Kyoto Prefecture
Government has developed “Charisma Navigation,” a mobile navigation
system for tourism that provides you with various information and
functions, such as Charisma’s recommended courses with specific theme,
searching tourism database, navigating to the destination by bus,
subway and on foot with help of GPS, so that you can easily get
authentic but local tourism contents in Kyoto and Nara.
blizzardboy