According to an Aichi regional newspaper Chunichi Shimbun [J], there was an interesting new attempt on Bon-Odori, traditional summer dance festival around Japan, to avoid future noise problem bothering neighbors.
15-20 minutes in their regular festival, 50 FM radio are lent to bon dancers, who are attending locals, and they dance with music from their earphones. The festival space keeps silent.
The festival space is planned to move to other in 2015, where hospital locates near by. And this trial is to see if this radio-driven silent bon festival can be an answer for noise issue, as the organizer said.
The city, Tokai-shi, Aichi prefecture is suburb of Nagoya, Japan’s 4th biggest city. I do not know if there are many such people getting mad at bon festival music, but in the crowded country, some people are sensitive not to generate noise. Like talking over cellphone is banned at many train lines, which encouraged mobile web growth. (Though daily urban life in Japan is surrounded a lot of public announcements)
Wait, let me get this straight. It’s perfectly acceptable for sound trucks to drive around blaring meaningless garbage, and motorcycles to race around without so much as a ticket, but they can’t dance a traditional Japanese dance with music? What’s wrong with this picture?
I understand the need to reduce noise issues, but maybe they should start somewhere else.