How about GPS-guided Smartphone for Touring Temples and Shrines?

Autumn is afoot in Japan as that deadly heat is subsiding mid September; the most tempting touring season in Japan is just around the corner. To guide your way around touring in Japan, how about a new-marketed app? The season is right, and there are temples and shrines all over Japan beckoning you.

The new application, "Come Shuin", is a product of Come Luck Co., Fukuoka, with complete data on almost all the major temples and shrines in Japan, complete with an album to affix "goshuin" . Goshuin, by the way, is a seal stamp given to worshippers and visitors to shrines and temples - a popular collector's item.

Come Shuin is GPS-linked and locates nearby shrines and temples as you tour about. Wherever you are, you can locate an ideal resting spot at your fingertips. A touring salesman Tomoyuki Watanabe is heavily addicted to Come Shuin: "I love shrines and temples, and wherever I tour on business, this app comes in handy in easily locating unknown local shrines and temples. That's relaxing," says he.

Many tourists from abroad come to Japan to tour cultural spots particularly shrines and temples. Major shrines and temples are often described in tourist booklets but not less known but astonishingly attractive ones in loalities. Come Shuin can furnish just that kind of info you would need out in the countryside - that is, if you happen to be a more inquisitive tourist.

Come Shuin has competitors in Jinja-Bukkaku Map (Temples Shrines Map) by atStage Inc., Tokyo, with data on 80 thousand temples and shrines across the nation, and Kyoto Zendera Meguri (Kyoto Zen Shrines Pilgrimage) by Wagosha, Kyoto, featuring Zen temples in Kyoto.

As I said in the outset, Japan is at the gate of her most charming tourist season - "Aki" or autumn. Do try a tour of Japan at her best. (Nathan Shiga)