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Japan's female bosses mapping a course for other women



For the 2022 event back in July, an interactive, online map was made available to show where and when to see the 34 huge, ornate floats that paraded across the city of Kyoto over two separate days.To get more news about 中文字幕在线精品视频站, you can visit our official website.

Using GPS, it showed the location of each float. And you could also use the map to find your friends and chat with them. In addition, if you clicked on a building or street, you could read about its history in Japanese or English.

The person behind the technology is Machi Takahashi, the president and co-chief executive of Kyoto-based, digital map firm Stroly. A mother of two, she is a rare female entrepreneur in a country where the start-up scene is still very much dominated by men."I was surprised that [the festival organisers] would let us digitise their map, because I thought these traditional cultural festivals are quite conservative," she says.

The website-based digital map is accessed by scanning a QR code. Hideo Yoshii, who is in charge of looking after one of the biggest floats, says that Stroly may have gotten some pushback if it had just wanted to put QR code stickers or signs up on walls.Instead Stroly created a pretty postcard that had not just the QR code printed on it, but also the pattern of a traditional Japanese map. This complemented the atmosphere of the ancient event, and was also used as the design for the digital map Stroly made.

"Before the pandemic, we gave out a pamphlet, but tourists found it difficult to navigate the city," says a spokeswoman for the city's tourism department.

"By using Stroly's digital map, police officers who are on the ground found it much easier to explain to visitors where to go. We've also managed to reduce our paper waste by a third," she adds.The idea to set up a business making digital maps came to Ms Takahashi and her husband and co-founder Toru while they were both still working at Kyoto-based technology research institute ATR. He is Stroly's chairman and co-chief executive.

One of their first customers was the movie industry theme park Toei Kyoto Studio Park back in 2010.

"We asked Mr and Ms Takahashi to create a game using Nintendo DS," says Norihiro Yamaguchi, who was the boss of Toei Kyoto Studio Park at the time.The map and GPS-based game that the Takahashis produced involved the park's visitors having to locate seven actors playing screen villains.

Six years later, the Takahashis left the research institute to set up Stroly as their own business, with the theme park remaining one of its main clients.

"Thanks to smartphones which allow users to access the Stroly map in different languages, visitors can find out about the details of our shows and facilities," says a spokesman for the park.

Stroly has now produced almost 10,000 interactive, digital maps, including one highlighting the vibrant nightlife of the busy Shinjuku area of central Tokyo. That was commissioned by the government of the capital city.