No right turn for the rightFebruary 23rd, 2006 by Joe Jones |
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Wander around Tokyo long enough, and you’ll notice emergency roadblocks by certain intersections, staffed by police from morning to night. Most of these roadblocks are located around Minato-ku; you’ll see them in Azabu, Hiroo, Roppongi and other trendy districts. The purpose of said roadblocks? To keep rightwingers in speaker trucks from harrassing the embassies of countries they don’t like, e.g. China and Korea.
Once they hear the noise of speaker truck music (something like enka meets Chinese opera), the cops spring into action, as in this encounter near the RussiaKorean embassy in Minami-azabu:
With the road blocked off, the speaker truck is forced to hang out in the right turn lane for a while, annoying nobody but the drivers stuck up against the fence.
The first time I saw rightwingers harassing people in Tokyo was when I was visiting the city in high school, and I thought it was crazy back then. But after a while, it becomes as natural as separating your burnable and non-burnable garbage.
February 24th, 2006 at 2:53 am
Oh how I wish Japan had noise pollution laws. It would be nice if the soothing sounds of birds chirping in Tokyo parks weren’t coming from the speakers, but actual birds which are otherwise drowned out by the speaker-trucks.
February 24th, 2006 at 4:49 am
Surely that’s near the Korean embassy, not the Russian embassy.
February 24th, 2006 at 9:53 am
Russia and Japan have an outstanding territorial dispute, maybe some nutty right wingers decided to protest against Russia?
February 24th, 2006 at 11:30 am
Uh… yeah. Exactly. That doesn’t change the location of the embassies in Tokyo.
February 24th, 2006 at 2:39 pm
Russian Embassy (Very close to Tokyo-American club, right?)
Korean Embassy
Easy enough.
February 24th, 2006 at 5:27 pm
Ah, Curzon’s right. The geography around the two is so damn similar…