Why is chindon trumpet and drum music only used to launch new shops?
Actually, there are groups who have attempted to turn it into a recorded folk music, but it was originally developed as the radio jingle equivalent of its time.
Why bossa nova in Excelsior?
Why jazz in a posh Chinese restaurant?
Why does my local chain gyudon play BGM one day and death metal the next?
Its just noise that nobody notices. My father-in-law leaves the car radio untuned for half an hour without noticing. Group oriented countries like Spain tend to like background noise
Why is Japanese music so shite?
Japanese rockers aren’t miserable enough to be the next Radiohead or Nirvana, and the people who are miserable enough lock themselves away at home instead of railing against the world with punk music
If regular pachinko pinball slot machine players have to wear earplugs, why don’t they just turn down the music?
The music both gets the adrenalin going and produces the trance-like stupor that is most of the appeal for a stressed salaryman
Why do the Japanese have no concept of noise pollution?
It’s not just the Japanese. The Turkish and Thais pipe music into almost every park! Even more than the Japanese, Asian countries are only a generation or two away from the countryside and the silence of a rice field means being backward and even ‘lonely’. Add to that Japanese salarymen in the safety department and advertising department doing their gambaru best by adding sounds to escalators, vending machines, posters etc. and there you have it.
Why do the Japanese only dance at O-Bon (the summer festival of the dead)?
Although there are plenty of other local festivals with dancing involved, this is the only time of year associated with dancing almost everywhere. It originally started as an ecstatic nembutsu Buddhist dance, possibly meant to communicate with the returning spirits of the ancestors. Because it was not tied up with local deities like (Shinto) local festivals, it became a national custom.
