The Black Buses

Most days of the week, my peaceful Japanese style home is invaded by Japanese style noise pollution of the worst kind. I'm not sure why we call them black buses, since they're not black, but we do. They actually come in a variety of colors, but all of them have steel mesh over the windows and giant speakers on top blaring martial music or someone yelling in Japanese at the top of their lungs. They're rightist propaganda buses and they love to come by my house, since I live directly in between the Chinese and Korean consulates. There's still a lot of militarist sentiment in Japan and they're upset about what Japan has turned into since the last war. One of their favorite targets is foreigners, especially the Chinese and Koreans, with whom the Japanese are currently involved in border disputes. Thankfully the police don't let them get very close, but they're still an amazingly loud nuisance, especially on weekends. Because of this, there are cops on every corner of my street with portable barricades in case the black buses try to get near the consulates. The minute the police at the two main intersections at either end of my street hear the music, they swing into action, pulling a portable barricade across most of the street while a similarly armored police bus pulls out from hiding nearby and blocks of the rest of the street. They play this game of cat and mouse all day long, with the black buses driving by in a seemingly endless cycle of rightist rage. I can't believe they don't have noise pollution laws in Japan, but that must be the case, since the cops never do anything about the buses. It may also be a question of a feared political backlash from the ultra-nationalists (uyoku) who run the buses.

Of course, numerous other vehicles employ the same tactics for everything from selling fruit off the back of a truck, to picking up used appliances for recycling/resale.

Addendum:

Although I could swear I've seen other colors of buses screaming propaganda at me, today I walked to the end of the block to see what all the fuss was about when I heard the shouting, and these were indeed black buses. There were about 6 or 7 of them lined up at the entrance to the street in front of the barricade, ranging from relatively unimposing minivans, to A-team style vans and smaller buses with metal grating on the windows and armor welded over the wheels, to the plush black tour bus, presumably for VIPs. They ranted and raved at the barricade for about 15 minutes before pulling away, a procedure, which, due to the size and number of the buses, actually took quite a while.

I couldn't tell if they were annoyed at us being there taking photos or not, since my Japanese isn't really that good. I'm pretty sure that said something about people taking photos when we walked up, and then started yelling about gaikoku (foreign countries) instead of their previous rant about Kankoku (Korea). I've actually heard of one German ex-pat getting into an altercation with them, but nothing of the sort happened when we went to look. Of course, that could be due to the massive police presence, but who knows.