Word: ginza
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...after dark, when traffic diminishes, that Tokyo really begins to build. Bulldozers and steamrollers emerge like nocturnal predators; the smell of hot tar and the chatter of jackhammers shatter the night. In Shinjuku, Tokyo's Greenwich Village, and along the Ginza, an army of orangehelmeted workmen swarms out to remove temporary planks covering the streets, while trailer trucks roar up to dump fuming loads of fill into yawning caverns. Thousands of lights sway in the evening breeze, sending crooked shadows under the neon. At dawn, the trucks and workers disappear like cockroaches. Then the city's kamikaze...
...last, the government all but declared water illegal. Noodle restaurants had to cut down their cooking, bathhouse hours were restricted, swimming pools closed. On the narrow side streets, police water trucks-usually employed to quell riots-filled housewives' buckets with water hauled in from nearby rivers. In the Ginza nightclubs, B-girls pushed dry martinis, urged thirsty tourists to "drink your whiskey without water and help save Tokyo...
Roar. Rattle. Bump-bump-bump. Bee-eep beep. Clang. Rat-tat-tat. The illuminated sign at a Nishi-Ginza intersection in downtown Tokyo blinks a tentative 80, then flashes to 82. Red light. Screech! North-south traffic stops. The number blinks: 81, 79, 78. Ready, eastwest? Engines whine. Clutches out. Getaway! Flash goes the sign: 79, 81, 82-84!-See THE WORLD, The Fresh Start...
Roar. Rattle. Bump-bump-bump. Bee-eep beep. Clang. Rat-tat-tat. The illuminated sign at a Nishi-Ginza intersection in downtown Tokyo blinks a tentative 80, then flashes...
Tokyo being Tokyo and gadget-minded Japanese being gadget-minded Japanese, some campaigner for municipal quiet has dreamed up the idea of erecting an electronic billboard to measure Nishi-Ginza's sound level, translate it into phons (decibels), and transmit it in illuminated numbers to a populace presumably shamed into silence. There it stands, beside a bold sign proclaiming BE MORE QUIET! THE NOISE AT THIS MOMENT: 78 PHONS. STANDARD FOR RESIDENTIAL AREA: 50 PHONS. BUSY CORNERS: 70 PHONS...