Happenings in Akiba
Went to Akiba on Sunday for some fresh air (eheh) and to test out Sekai Camera, an iPhone app that lets you "tag the world". Akiba was once famous for not allowing cars through the streets on Sundays, allowing people to walk freely in the street. There were many street performers singing/playing in the streets, advertising their CDs. This came to an end after
1. A model was doing revealing photoshoots in the middle of the streets
and 2. A man drove a car into the street before exiting the vehicle and stabbing people.
Now, Sundays in Akihabara are just a day where otaku are out shopping, regular people are laughing at everything, and tourists are confused why the streets are open.
Right outside the station there were these girls singing from the top of a van parked in a lot, probably advertising a music cd. There were singing enka-style songs and moving gracefully with the music. Street performers are very rare these days, so a small crowd formed and watched them. According to the bus, they were "twins from China", but there were 3 of them..?
There was some incident that caused the fire department to come and check it out. I went to the scene, and there was no sign of a fire. There was also no sign of a cat stuck in a tree or anything like that. I had no idea what happened but they had to block off the area with yellow tape and call 30 city employees. I stayed for about 10 minutes, but nothing happened. I don't suppose anyone else knows?
2 people watching the scene from the up high. The first floor is a bar, but maybe the second floor is a costume cafe?
I tried out the Sekai Camera app with less than spectacular results. All I got was tags on the Sega and Softmap buildings. Maybe my internet speed isn't fast enough to fetch all the tags? Nonetheless, I left a tag at the "fire" scene asking what happened.
A rock band playing on the corner of the street, advertising their upcoming live concert. The planets must have been aligned to have 2 street performers playing on one day. I didn't like/hate their punk rock songs, but they had a lot of energy. Playing for a crowd looks really fun, especially when energy is being passed back and forth I remember I was at a Mell concert in this year's Otakon, jumping and shouting until it hurt. Do you have good memories of con concerts?
Looking forward to meet u soon ;)
The fire appears to have been false alarm. I read somewhere that more than half of the times the fire brigade respond to something it turns out to be false alarm.
Causes of false firealarms can be quite simple, such as people smoking near the smoke detector. I know of an episode where this happened and since it was an important building the alarm went strait to the firestation. They showed up with 8 firetrucks before anybody had a chance to tell them it was a false alarm :P
Another real example was a freight train stopping at a red signal in a tunnel. Once the signal turned green the diesel locomotive went into full power and the exhaust triggered the smoke detector. The whole railroad system more or less stopped because now they had a fire in the tunnel :P
Steam locomotives also triggers a lot of fire alarms. Even if the railroad do everything they can't to prevent it people will still use the mobile phone to report that a station smells of smoke/something burning.
Kitchens, specially deep frying is also a common cause of firealarms. However most of the time the oil have been covered and the air used up when the firebrigade shows up.
I think you get the picture of how stuff like this happens on a daily basis xD
I see! That doesn't explain the large number of employees just staring at the buildings. Maybe they didn't want to go back to work.
Safety regulations can demand everybody to get outside and just wait until the firefighters have cleared the building and declared it a false alarm. Maybe everybody thought the fire was elsewhere in the building and none of them actually knew what triggered the alarm.
My first thought at seeing all those people standing around and with the whole police/fire department standing around was a bomb threat, since there doesn't appear to be a fire. But tymmur's explanation made the most sense, so. ^^;
I think that the place in image 19134 maybe a more "adult" place. Just something about that shot makes me think brothel.
Those things are illegal in Japan, so naturally uncreative wouldn't even dream of such a place to be in his beloved Akihabara. However I say that there is a fair chance that you are right. The rather stupid anti-brothel law in Japan states that a man isn't allowed to pay for placing his dolphin inside an oyster. It's so specific that if he pays for other services and gets the oyster service for free as a bonus then it's a gray area. Talk about a poor working law.
Well, I know prostitution exists even in Akihabara, but why would an employee and her client look out the window and take pictures like that? It was too casual for that kind of business.
Ignorance is bliss. If they behave like nothing illegal goes on, then people will assume that nothing illegal is going on, regardless of the truth ^^
I can't tell if their actions were ok or not, but I can tell that we can't tell unless somebody have actually been to that specific place and even then it could be questioned :P