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Japan is changing

12th of Jun, 2006ce* in: diary, japan

It appears that the newst law in Tokyo has come into effect, and it’s to do with traffic.
Before, in the past, one could ride ones bike to where one pleased and just dump it with a lock on the wheel. Now one has to take ones bike to a designated spot and clamp it to a machine or pay a space rental fee. This is the same deal with motorbikes, where once before, parking your scooter anywhere was easy and legal, now it’s totally out of the question and illegal!

Shibuya has changed a lot since I first came here in 1999. I’ve only been living in Japan since 2001 but since that time a lot of the things I loved about Japan have gone or changed for the worse. Here’s my anal list:

All night game centers were closed. Game centers now close at midnight
Tabacco vending machines close at 11pm
Beer vending machines are totally removed
smoking is banned in busy places like shibuya (although no one cares)
PSE law comes in to ban consumer electronics over 5 years old
traffic law comes in to ban slinging your bike anywhere you please

So I guess next it will be a ban on smoking in public places, including bars and resturants. This will be a hard ban to get through parliment but it will go through sooner or later. It’s shame really because I only just started smoking again this year, and if the ban was implemented last year I wouldn’t have given a monkeys.
Still, I would welcome it, I would have to change my routine. Fags are so cheap here, at just 270yen a pack. That’s about 1 pound 25 pence.

I may end up moving to the countyside… actually that doesn’t sound so bad.