Last night, at about 2 a.m., I was jolted out of my sleep by a harsh sound. There seemed to be a lot of noise all around but I was too groggy to make sense of what was going on. When I came back to my senses a few seconds later, I began making sense of the noise—’FIRE! FIRE! THERE IS A FIRE ON THE FOURTH FLOOR! PLEASE EVACUATE IN AN ORDERLY FASHION’, followed by something similar in Japanese.

Of course, I went out and got down the stairs, along with around 40–50 other residents of this complex. Luckily, there was no fire, and the alarm appeared to have been triggered by mistake. But as I stood waiting in the reception area, I began to think of the announcement that has brought me there.

The place I am staying has been made for international visitors, so it is almost completely bilingual (Japanese and English), whether it be the buttons on the toilet-seat that warms itself invitingly when you sit on it, or emergency evacuation instructions that (thankfully) pull you out of your sleep. Even the Japanese here is largely foreigner-friendly. Messages in Japanese also have Furigana, which means that the pronunciation of the Kanji characters is written on top—very helpful for people like me and countless other foreigners. Given all this, I expected that the emergency evacuation message would be more easily worded. I’m not trying to nitpick here—the importance of having very simple emergency messages struck me specially because, despite having basic knowledge of Japanese, I couldn’t make any sense of the Japanese announcement except for the part which said that there was a fire (KAJI DESU! KAJI DESU!). Arguably, that should be enough to convince you to get out, but not understanding an important announcement can often cause more panic and fear, even if the part that isn’t understood is relatively irrelevant. ‘Evacuate’ could be changed to ‘leave building’ or ‘exit’, for instance. _Orderly _might be a bit difficult to understand too (though not that much), and fashion, in the sense of _manner, _might not be well-known. _Order _does occur in the Basic English WordList, while the other two don’t.