Out all night
The government is expected to reject an application by a dance club operator in Roppongi, Minato Ward, Tokyo, to make the district a government special zone to allow clubs to stay open all night.
It is expected to be rejected on the ground that the special designation would lead to a deterioration of public order.
…
In November, Velfarre asked the government to make Roppongi a special zone for structural reform and allow its clubs to be open all night like those in London and Paris. The company argued that the proposed easing of regulations would attract tourists to Roppongi, revitalizing the district.
However, the Metropolitan Police Department opposed the request, saying foreigners committed many crimes in that part of the capital [SRK rolls eyes], and an all-night club in an area full of drunk people would make Roppongi a hotbed of criminality.
Anyone who thinks something has to change for Roppongi to contribute to a deterioration of public order and become a hotbed of criminality has clearly never been there.
Oo! Oo! I have customers in Minato. Offices on Roppongi AAMOF.
Is that what “ku” means in that context — “Ward”?
Somehow to the gaijin ear, “Minato ku” sounds more … exotic than “The Minato Ward.” The latter sounds like a Democrat voting district in some decadent Northeastern metropolis. The former sounds like it could be … on Vulcan, or somewhere romantically far away.
M
Haha damn all you gaijin, fouling up the place. 😉
Mark:
Ku, the character for which (区) is used to denote partitioning, does indeed mean “ward” in that case, though the 23 wards of Tokyo have taken to styling themselves “cities” in English nowadays. Given that many of them have over half a million people, of course, that’s hardly an empty pretense, though most of them don’t have the kind of distinct cultural identity most of us would associate with city-ness.
If ward sounds decadent and Democratic, perhaps it’s because it has shadowy associations with the phrase “ward of the state”?
And there are parts of Roppongi that make you feel as if you really had somehow taken a wrong turn and ended up on Vulcan.
Kelvin:
I know. Like you couldn’t see that angle coming from a mile away.
Deteriorating order in Roppongi? I am shocked — shocked!
I’m late to the party, but Roppongi is a hotbed a criminality in the daylight hours. And of course they blame it on the gaijin in general. Because they don’t have the guts to say “drunk American sailors and Korean mafia”.
How about if all the drunk, law breaking gaijin simply go to Kabukicho and join forces with the drunk, law breaking Japanese buisnessmen. What a wonderful, multicultural anarchy that would be!