Why Can’t They Just Leave Us Alone?
One of the down sides to living in Japan is the loudspeaker trucks–as you know well if you are a long-time reader of this blog. True, we don’t get robo-calls during an election, and I admit that this could be worse than loudspeaker trucks. But only marginally. At least you can avoid the robo-calls by leaving your house.
My location has turned out to be pretty bad, in fact: there is a spot on the road just outside my building which all the loudspeaker trucks favor as a staging area for long rants and raves. They’ll stop there, deploy their banner-toting crew, and do their schtick for ten, twenty, or even thirty minutes at a go. During heavy election season campaigning, we sometimes get one or two of these every day. The are, of course, scheduled for times when the most people are at home trying to relax in peace and quiet.
There seems to be an election on right now; I haven’t heard of this in the news, but I sure can hear the loudspeaker trucks. Yesterday, as I tried to teach a lesson, no fewer than three trucks drove past the school, almost drowning out my lecture. As for the people pictured below, I honestly can’t say whether they are a political campaign (I couldn’t see the side of the truck where a candidate’s name would usually be plastered, though the lack of a name on all sides is a hint they may not be campaigning for a particular candidate). All I know is that this is an election season of some sort, and these people blared away for 15 minutes as I tried to do my morning blog-reading.
The caravan parks and begins to unpack their wares; the speakers waste no time, shouting their message from the moment they arrive
Getting the banners out
The first of several speakers
The Banner Brigade, fully deployed
Two weeks ago, I caught some audio of a guy with a loudspeaker truck; the audio is here (800KB wav file). This guy was on an anti-American kick, and at one point even shouted, “America dai-kirai!!” (“I despise America!!”) The significant thing about this audio was that I never actually saw the guy or his truck–when he made this speech, he was at the very least a few hundred meters away, maybe more. And yet I could hear him blasting away with my windows closed.
Make sure the new hearing-sensitive neighbor is home when they come by and let him loose on them 😀
Great idea! I only wish it would work like that…
I’m surprised there is not more political pressure to reduce the volume from these folks. There are probably some interesting federal, regional, and city laws that are involved here. One might be freedom of speech. Another might involve distruption of the peace. Perhaps they are regulated and need to work at specific hours during the day. Perhaps the volume is regulated as well. Perhaps some folks feel connected to their community when they hear this stuff. Personally, I’m not fond on outside noise. I sleep w/ ear puddy ear plugs, which take out all outside noise.
In the 70’s we live on the economy on a mixed-usage residential street(you know, 2 blocks from almost anything), and I can hear to this day the short squat-nosed trucks blaring at, yes, election time and when vendors passed. So, as kids in the states ran for the ice cream truck, we ran for roasted sweet potatoes.