Noisepon - Jazzpan

The well-disposed traveler will often associate certain impressions with a certain country. Consequently, CNN called a short break feature in its news programme 'sights & sounds of...' such and such country. Indeed, certain sights, colours, but also smells are usually well remembered. The same goes for sounds, of course.

Now, like every country, Japan is full of sound. In some cases one would probably be inclined to call it noise. However, this - as with many things - lies 'in the ears of the auditor'.

For instance, almost everyone who ever passed or entered a so called 'Patchinko parlour' is likely to wonder what on earth the attraction is about these places. There, in a number of straight rows people sit closely next to each other all staring at machines that are a mix between a pin-ball and slot machines.
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The player buys a basket full of balls made of metal that are all a bit more than 1cm in diameter. The machine gets filled with these and then they fall through it, only held back by a number of arranged metal sticks or 'nails'. The player can watch this and, in a very limited way, influence the course the balls take.

Eventually they all fall into slots and depending on where they fall in, the player wins or not. However, by law the players can't win money. So they get little 'gifts' like a toy, chocolate or a cheap perfume etc.

Now, there they sit - for hours - surrounded by a deafening mix of the noise the metal balls make when falling through the machines, plus extremely loud music (it needs to surmount the noise produced by the falling metal balls going though the machines), plus constant announcements form the staff (which, again, needs to surmount the music and the noise of the machines).

I never got the point of doing this, but a friend of mine assured me that most people visiting these places are either extremely bored or addicted - or both.
aölskdjf
Compared to that it's almost relaxing to stand at a six lane street somewhere in the city. What's amazing about that is, that even with quite some traffic it seems not as loud as in other cities in the world. I assume a number of factors come together to keep the noise level down so much:

1. Taxis in Tokyo run usually with gas - so they produce no real engine noise. 2. Japanese car's engines are also usually very silent. 3. Most streets seem to be paved with pavement that, to some extent, absorbs noise produced by car wheels rolling over it. 4. The tires of the cars seem to also be of the kind that produce less noise on the pavement. Combined this sounds more like the gliding of vehicles in a sci-fi movie than a city of the year 2008.

But enough about such sounds. Over to some more pleasant things like music, and there in particular - jazz.
alöksdj
Japanese apparently love jazz. Jazz is played and listened to A LOT. It therefore doesn't come as a surprise that there is even a website talking about Jazz and Zen.

In fact, it's about the hardest thing to escape jazz music in Tokyo, if you DON'T want to listen to it. That is because jazz is THE ultimate background music for bars, cafés and restaurants and certain sections of department stores.

After a while you don't even realise it anymore and it gains a kind of 'air status', i.e. one consciously has to concentrate - like in Zen? - to actually become aware of it....is this the ultimate state of being..? :-)