Annai

Annai refers to the giving of directions or information. Because it is a service, it is most often seen in the honorific form go-annai out of politeness and respect towards the customer.

Annai is a Chinese compound (on-reading) that is normally written in the Chinese characters 案内, as seen below:

Go-annai Odakyū Hyakkaten Information Odakyu Department Store

Koin rokkaa Annai-sho Coin-operated lockers Information

Somewhat surprisingly, go-annai can also be seen in hiragana, as ごあんない:

Odakyū noriba annai Odakyu platform information

Keiō Shinjuku eki Go-annai Keio Shinjuku Station Information

By dispensing with Chinese characters, which have a certain stiff, official air about them, hiragana presumably makes the information desks less forbidding and more approachable to customers.

A Google search in August 2003 revealed the following pattern of usage on the Internet:

The overwhelmingly prevalent form is ご案内, with the honorific go- in hiragana and annai in characters. There is still, however, a minority tendency to write go- in characters as 御, a hangover from older days when kanji usage was much more prevalent. The hiragana form ごあんない that we saw above is found only in a small minority of cases.