Narita, 11 other airports introduce new devices to speed up immigration  

April 16, 2017

NARITA, CHIBA PREF.-Narita International Airport near Tokyo and 11 other Japa­nese airports on Saturday start­ed using portable personal iden­tification devices to speed up immigration checks, at a time when the number of tourists from abroad is soaring. The device, called biocart, can collect fingerprint data from foreign visitors and take pic­tures of their faces, both re­quired as measures to prevent terrorism under the nation's im­migration procedures, while they are waiting in lines to reach the immigration counters at air­ports. At Narita, 45 units of the bio­cart are introduced at Terminal 1 and 30 units at Terminal 2. The portable equipment is expected to reduce the waiting time in busy hours to 20 min­utes from 30 minutes at present. Among the 11 other airports that introduced the biocart are Chubu Centrair International Airport in Aichi Prefecture, New Chitose Airport in the northernmost Japan prefecture of Hokkaido, Hiroshima Air­port in the western prefecture of Hiroshima, and Fukuoka Air­port in the southwestern prefec­ture of Fukuoka. Three airports, including Kansai International Airport in Osaka Prefecture, western Ja­pan, started using the machine earlier.