Town Announcements/Songs:
An interesting part of living in rural Japan is the town announcements and songs that are broadcast over a loudspeaker at regular intervals throughout the day. The first broadcast comes every morning at 7:00 and it is in the form of a song. While I thing the idea of these songs and announcements is a good one, for reasons I’ll explain later, I have the unfortunate pleasure of having one of the 10 or so speakers in the valley located right outside my house. Actually, the speaker is maybe 75 yds away, but the volume is so loud that it seems to be right outside my window. Think Saturday and Sunday mornings, you worked a hard week and are looking forward to sleeping in when suddenly, “BLING, PLING, DING DONG DONG DING DING DING!!...etc” This is a good 40 sec song, which can feel like an eternity when you’ve been snapped out of a lovely dream and are waiting for the torturously loud tune to end in hopes that you can get back to it. During the week, however, this song is ok because it lets everyone know that the day has begun and it is time to get up and go to work.

Then next song comes at 12:00 sharp and is the “lunchtime” song! It’s cute, really; literally everyone in town who works at a job where you can decide your own lunch schedule has lunch at this exact time. At my school, we have class till about 12:15 and lunch time is at 12:30, but when I’m at the BOE on Fridays I get to enjoy lunch time with the majority of the town. Lunch time is a quiet peaceful time at the BOE; they dim or turn off the lights altogether, the talking gets quiet and is never about work, sometimes the boss will turn on the one TV that is next to his desk and people can watch the game or news, many people drift off to sleep for a 20 min nap, and that’s totally ok! I think many American establishments need to take a page out of the Japanese textbook here and stop making lunch a stressful, working time. It’s neat to actually see people recharged after lunch, and many literally roll up their sleeves to eagerly tackle the last part of the day- you can actually feel this change of energy in the air.

The third song comes… can you guess when? Yep, right at 5 sharp. It’s the “time to go home” song. While some people go home at this time, others stay past 5, but this is a time when you can take off your tie, or change into a track suit (see a future blog entry for more about that), relax, have a smoke… you get the idea. You aren’t officially getting paid, so you can work at your own pace. I usually am home at about 4:30, since my contract is from 8:00 to 4:00, and I must admit I feel a pang of guilt knowing that most of my colleagues are back at work, slaving away, but there is really nothing more I could be doing, and this is kind of expected from the JET’s anyway.

In between the 5:00 song and the final, “sleepy time: 9:00 song there are sometimes announcements. About 60% of the time a bear has been seen around Ichihasama, and the announcement tells whereabouts the bear was seen, what time, what direction it was headed, and warns people to stay out of that area. I always feel bad when I hear this because usually a hunter is dispatched to kill the bear. The bear is then prepared for consumption and in Kurikoma, the next town over, one can order bear as a delicacy. Poor bears. This year, there have been more bears around Ichi than any other year because for some reason, there is a shortage of food for the bears in the mountains. I haven’t figured out exactly why but I’ll keep you posted. Other “in between” time announcements serve to inform people of town happenings: parades, festival fireworks, sporting events, where to get tickets, start times and end times, etc… Sometimes, it tells about a typhoon that is on the way and how sever it is. I quite like the whole idea of these town announcements. I feel that they really bring the town together and everyone has the same information and is on the same page. It gives the town a family feel, too. I like the safety aspect of it as well, as far as bears and typhoons. I’m sure if a child were ever kidnapped they would use these speakers as an “Amber Alert” vehicle, too. At first I couldn’t understand a thing of what was being said, but now I can at least pick up a few words and know what it’s about… and that feels good. Just last week the 5:00 song changed and that was refreshing. I wonder if they have songs for different seasons or what? I’ll keep you informed!