Yet again an ambulance just used their siren/voice alarm at 12:45am. I’ve mentioned this annoyance in Japan before. In the UK it’s illegal to use your car horn after 11pm and before 7am. I’m fairly sure it’s either illegal, or at least severely frowned upon, to use sirens after 11pm, and certainly after midnight they’re rare. In Japan, the ambulance drivers in particular seem to be all like Bill Cosby in Mother, Jugs and Speed. This one used their sirens and the recorded voice that (I assume – I can’t hear well enough even to try and translate) tells people to get out of the way, then it stopped. About thirty second later it started up again. Since I’m sitting at the computer I pulled up the blind and watched them drive off quite slowly and with absolutely no other vehicular traffic in sight. They then proceeded down the “road” along next to the canalised river bed. It’s fairly narrow but it’s got good visibility and very few vehicles, mostly pedestrians. I’m sure that the ordinary lights would be enough to get people out of the way, and if people were in the way THEN they could have switched the siren/voice on. But, no, if they’re moving and on a call they have the noise going.

At least now the elections are over the loudspeaker vans have gone. There’s still a delivery van that beeps everywhere it goes, though. Makes me long for the once a week (alternating garbage and recycling) collection vans at 7:30am at home.
Japan has a serious problem with noise spam (spaudium?) .