Preparing for Earthquakes and Typhoons: What You Can and Cannot Read in Ukrainian

Among the multilingual disaster-prevention information put out by Japan’s national government bodies, none of the following support Ukrainian (confirmed September 2026): the disaster-prevention app “Safety tips,” supervised by the Japan Tourism Agency (15 languages); the Japan Meteorological Agency’s multilingual pages (14 languages, including Japanese); and the Cabinet Office’s leaflet introducing these apps (15 languages). On the other hand, NHK WORLD-JAPAN’s disaster-prevention Q&A, the voice-translation app “VoiceTra,” and the Immigration Services Agency’s 生活・就労ガイドブック (“Guidebook on Living and Working”) include material you can read or use in Ukrainian.

Use an app that can receive alerts in a language you can read, such as English or Japanese, and read up on how to prepare using Ukrainian-language material. As of September 2026, this is the combination available.

None of the national government’s multilingual disaster-prevention information is in Ukrainian

The disaster-prevention app “Safety tips”

“Safety tips” is a disaster-information app for foreign visitors to Japan, supervised by the Japan Tourism Agency. According to the agency’s materials, it launched in October 2014 (Heisei 26) and sends push notifications for things such as earthquake early warnings, tsunami warnings, extreme weather warnings, eruption alerts, evacuation information, and heatstroke alerts. It also includes a flowchart showing what actions to take in a disaster, and a “communication card” for asking people nearby for help. It is free.

It supports 15 languages. The Japan Tourism Agency’s materials list Japanese, English, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Korean, Spanish, Portuguese, Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian, Tagalog, Nepali, Khmer, Burmese, and Mongolian — neither Ukrainian nor Russian is included. The developer’s own page also lists the same 15 languages as of September 2026.

Although it is described as being for travelers, the Immigration Services Agency’s 生活・就労ガイドブック also introduces this app to foreign nationals living in Japan. There is no Ukrainian-language screen, but if you use it in a language you can read, such as English or Japanese, you can still receive an early warning before strong shaking arrives.

The Japan Meteorological Agency’s multilingual pages

The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) puts out disaster-prevention weather information — warnings and advisories, weather forecasts, earthquake information, tsunami warnings, eruption warnings, and the like — on multilingual pages of its website. In a press release on April 16, 2020, it expanded from 11 to 14 languages, and from September 16 of the same year it began putting out typhoon information in the same 14 languages as well. The 14 languages are Japanese, English, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Korean, Spanish, Portuguese, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Thai, Nepali, Khmer, Burmese, and Mongolian. Ukrainian is not among them either.

The JMA also publishes a “multilingual dictionary” translating the terms used in weather information into these 14 languages, which continues to be updated as of March 2026. It is meant as a basis for the translations local governments and companies use when putting out disaster information in a foreign language, and it, too, does not include Ukrainian.

The Cabinet Office’s multilingual leaflet

The Cabinet Office (Disaster Management) publishes a leaflet introducing apps and websites useful in a disaster, “Apps and Websites Useful in a Disaster,” in Japanese and 14 other languages. It introduces Safety tips, NHK WORLD-JAPAN, VoiceTra, the JMA’s disaster-prevention information page, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism’s disaster-prevention portal, and others. Ukrainian is not among the leaflet’s languages either.

What you can read in Ukrainian

NHK WORLD-JAPAN’s disaster-prevention Q&A and news

NHK WORLD-JAPAN’s multilingual portal “Life and Disaster Information in Easy Japanese and Other Languages” has a Ukrainian-language page. As of September 2026, the Ukrainian edition of the “Disaster Prevention Q&A” listed items such as the following.

• What to do when an earthquake occurs
• Preparing before a typhoon approaches
• The disaster message service
• Learning about disaster risk through hazard maps
• Learning about the new disaster-prevention weather information
• Making use of information on linear rainbands
• Preparing for heatstroke

News is also available in Ukrainian. However, the language list for the same portal’s service that sends urgent information as an app push notification does not include Ukrainian (Russian is included). In other words, material to read is available in Ukrainian, but there is no mechanism to alert you in that language.

The voice-translation app “VoiceTra”

“VoiceTra,” a voice-translation app from the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), can translate 33 languages, and Ukrainian is supported for both voice input and voice output. It is free. At an evacuation center or a government office counter, you can use it to translate on the spot what someone says to you in Japanese, or to turn what you want to say into Japanese. The Immigration Services Agency, too, introduces this app as “Ukrainian-supported” on its page for people who evacuated from Ukraine.

Because it is machine translation, the result is not always accurate. VoiceTra has a feature that shows a “back-translation” — translating the result back into the original language — which gives you a clue as to whether it was translated as you intended.

Chapter 10 of the Guidebook on Living and Working

The Immigration Services Agency’s 生活・就労ガイドブック has a Ukrainian-language edition. Chapter 10, “Emergencies and Disasters” (緊急・災害, Розділ 10 in the Ukrainian edition), explains how to dial 119 and 110, and how to prepare for and evacuate from typhoons, torrential rain, earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions.

However, the editions differ. The Ukrainian edition is the 7th edition, with a preface dated March 2025. The Japanese edition has been revised up through the 8th edition (February 2026, based on the system as of August 1, 2025). Both were produced before the review of disaster-prevention weather information in May 2026 described in the next section.

The Hyogo International Association’s disaster-prevention guidebook

The public interest incorporated foundation Hyogo International Association has published a Ukrainian edition of its “Disaster Prevention Guidebook for Children and Parents” (2022 fiscal year revised edition). This 20-page booklet, with Japanese and Ukrainian side by side, covers earthquakes, tsunamis, wind and flood damage, disaster preparedness, evacuation, evacuation sites, discussing things as a family, multilingual tools, and disaster drills. It is also linked from the Immigration Services Agency’s page for people who evacuated from Ukraine. Because it was made for Hyogo Prefecture, it includes some descriptions, such as the prefecture’s disaster-prevention information service, that apply only within Hyogo.

Information/service	Publishing body	Ukrainian
Disaster-prevention app Safety tips (15 languages)	Japan Tourism Agency (supervisor)	No
Multilingual pages of disaster-prevention weather information (14 languages)	Japan Meteorological Agency	No
Leaflet “Apps and Websites Useful in a Disaster”	Cabinet Office (Disaster Management)	No
Life and Disaster Information in Easy Japanese and Other Languages (Q&A, news)	NHK WORLD-JAPAN	Yes
Urgent-information push notifications	NHK WORLD-JAPAN	No (Russian available)
Voice-translation app VoiceTra (33 languages)	National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT)	Yes (both voice input and output)
Guidebook on Living and Working, Chapter 10, “Emergencies and Disasters”	Immigration Services Agency of Japan	Yes (7th edition)
Disaster Prevention Guidebook for Children and Parents	Hyogo International Association	Yes (2022 fiscal year revised edition)

Preparing for earthquakes

The 生活・就労ガイドブック (Japanese 8th edition) explains that Japan sits among several tectonic plates and is one of the world’s most earthquake-prone regions, and lists the following four things to do as everyday preparation.

• Discuss with your family where to evacuate to if an earthquake occurs
• Take part in your community’s disaster drills
• Prepare at least three days’ worth of food and drinking water (ideally around a week’s worth), along with items for treating injuries
• Secure furniture so it cannot fall over, and arrange it so that even if it does fall, it will not be dangerous

The Guidebook advises that, when shaking occurs, if you are inside a building you should protect your head under something sturdy like a table and wait for the shaking to stop; if you are outside, watch for falling signs and window glass and move to a safe place; and if you are driving, pull over to the left side of the road and turn off the engine. Once the shaking stops, turn off any fire, and turn off your circuit breaker before evacuating. It also advises that if you feel strong shaking, or even weak but long, slow shaking, near the sea or a river mouth, evacuate immediately away from the coast or river mouth to higher ground.

Japan’s “seismic intensity” (震度) is a 10-level scale, from 0 to 7, expressing how strongly the ground shook at a particular place, and is a different number from the “magnitude,” which expresses the size of the earthquake itself. News reports give both.

Preparing for typhoons and heavy rain

Typhoons and heavy rain tend to cause river flooding and landslides. The Guidebook recommends using a hazard map ahead of time to check places at risk of flooding, places at risk of landslides, evacuation sites, and a safe route to them. You can find a map for where you live on the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan’s “Hazard Map Portal Site.”

Calls to evacuate use a five-level “alert level” (警戒レベル). According to the Guidebook, Alert Level 3 is “Evacuation of Elderly and Others” (people who need more time to evacuate, such as elderly people, people with disabilities, and children, begin evacuating); Level 4 is “Evacuation Instruction” (everyone in a dangerous location evacuates); and Level 5 is “Emergency Safety Measures” (a disaster has already occurred or is imminent, and you should secure your safety immediately). If heading to an evacuation site would actually be more dangerous, it advises fleeing to an upper floor of a nearby sturdy building, or to the second floor or higher of your own home.

The names of warnings changed from May 29, 2026

From May 29, 2026, the JMA began operating new disaster-prevention weather information, giving information on river flooding, heavy rain, landslides, and storm surges names matched to the five-level evacuation alert levels. According to the JMA’s explanation, what used to be called a “Heavy Rain Warning” is now named the “Level 3 Heavy Rain Warning,” and a new “Danger Warning” corresponding to Alert Level 4 (for example, the “Level 4 Heavy Rain Danger Warning”) was newly added between the warning and the special warning.

The Guidebook and leaflets introduced above were all produced before this review. That is why the names of warnings may look different from what the Guidebook says; the meaning of the information itself has not changed. NHK WORLD-JAPAN’s Ukrainian-language disaster-prevention Q&A has an item on the new disaster-prevention weather information.

What you can prepare now

• Install Safety tips and set it up to use in a language you can read, such as English or Japanese.
• Read NHK WORLD-JAPAN’s Ukrainian-language disaster-prevention Q&A while things are calm.
• Install VoiceTra and try it once with a Ukrainian-Japanese pair.
• Use a hazard map to check the evacuation sites near your home, workplace, and school.
• Decide with your family where to meet and how to contact each other if an earthquake occurs.
• Prepare at least three days’ worth of water and food.

Disaster-prevention information and foreign-language consultation counters for the municipality where you live differ by local government. How to find a consultation counter is covered in the article on consultation counters for when you start living in Japan, and the mechanism of air raid sirens and evacuation in Ukraine is covered in the article on air raid sirens lasting three to five minutes, and Kyiv’s two-stage yellow and red alerts. Japan’s earthquake early warning is broadcast on TV and radio, on devices such as mobile phones, and through disaster-prevention administrative radio (Guidebook).