Japanese public broadcaster NHK has expanded its international emergency alert platform to 11 languages and introduced meteorological warning notifications. 

The decision to level up alerts on the NHK World – Japan app follows record engagement in 2024 with international visitors and foreign residents in Japan, NHK said. 

The previous service delivered emergency information via push notifications in four languages and five writing systems:  English, simplified and traditional Chinese, Portuguese and Vietnamese.

The seven new languages are French, Hindi, Indonesian, Korean, Russian, Spanish and Thai.

The app now also offers push notifications on meteorological emergency warnings such as torrential rains and storms in the 11 languages in 12 writing systems. Emergency warnings are issued when the risk of a major disaster is considered to have significantly heightened.