I’ve always enjoyed the sounds of Japan, from the calming bong-bong-bong made by train crossings to sounds that mark the seasons, like the buzzing of the cicadas in the humid Japanese summer or the old man driving around selling ishiyaki imo, stone-baked sweet potatoes, and playing that eerie-sounding sweet potato song through speakers. Every day while working at J-List, I immediately know when noon has rolled around because a siren located in the center of town goes off. It’s not just any siren — it’s essentially the same air-raid siren that sounded half a century ago when Japan was being bombed flat by Allied B-29s. The siren sounds every day at noon to announce that lunch time has arrived, but it serves some other purposes as well, including letting people know when there’s a local disaster such as a fire, and hearing the siren at night means everyone should check their neighbors to make sure everything is okay. In this way, it provides a little “community glue” for the people living in our city, unconsciously making everyone feel a part of the same happy group unit since practically everyone in our city is within hearing distance of the loud siren. When I first heard it, it was somewhat un-nerving, since it’s not a sound you normally encounter outside of movies about World War II. But now it’s just a part of my life in Japan.
