Saw on the news this morning that starting from June 1st this year, the law regarding illegal parking will change and become more severe. This is in my view a great thing as everyone knows illegal parking is rampant in Tokyo streets and is the primary cause of traffic jams. Just the other day I saw a guy park his mercedes on a busy crosswalk while a policeman on a bicycle watched and did absolutely nothing.
Previously, if you parked your car illegally policewomen in a tiny patrol car would drive by and chalk up your tires. This is a warning and if your car is still there when they return after about 30 minutes, they give you a parking ticket or put that yellow plastic tag on your side mirror. With the new law, there will be no grace period. The cops will come by and put a sticker on your car with a phone number that you must call. The parking ticket is sent to your house and if it is not paid they have the right to revoke your license or even repossess your car.
The local governments will also be recruiting thousands of citizen parking police that will go around checking for illegally parked cars. I’m not sure if these people will be able to give out the tickets or not. As with most new laws, they are rarely enforced but having them there does tend to put pressure on people to stop. I only caught the gist of the news as I was on the running machine at the gym, will try to find out more details later or if anyone has a link about the new law. please send to me.
Sounds good to me! There’s so much illegal parking out there causing problems for everyone else, it will be great to see some action against it. It should also provide some good income for the government from all the fines, too. I hope a) they stick with it and 2) they also target scooters and motorcycles parked illegally.
Hey Jim, good to see that you are still alive out there. Have you been keeping up with LOST?
So where are people supposed to park? Are they also going to attempt to increase the amount of public parking?
The point of the new law is to crack down on people parking in congested areas, e.g. near Nakameguro station that causes traffic jams, places where it is obvious you shouldn’t be stopping your car. And also to reduce the number of people driving when they don’t have to which in turn reduces air pollution.
And there are plenty of coin parking spaces if you look for them.
Yeah, I am pretty much caught up on LOST. I’ve been downloading the eps fan-subbed into Japanese when I can find them, and now my GF is interested too. Is season 1 out on video yet?
I’m still way behind on Battlestar Galactica, though.
If you’re free sometime, come over and check out the new apartment!
Jim, do you have all of season one with subtitles? I’d like to get a copy of them if you have time.
This is a much-needed change, since people have long abused the present system. I understand that civilian companies will be hired to do the enforcement, and will be able to levy fines or have cars towed *immediately* if someone leaves their car unattended in a no-parking area even for a moment.
This comes, however, at a time when Internet shopping is creating a booming business for delivery firms. They will not be exempted from the law. So they are making plans to use more bicycle deliverers and use carts to haul goods from legitimate parking places, etc., rather than stopping in from of your house to deliver directly from the truck.
No, I only have a few episodes of Season 2 with Japanese subs. Which is why I was asking about season 1 on video.
I’ll check on WinNY for subbed Lost eps – most of the japanese fansubbed shows seem to be on there, but I have not had much luck downloading them so far.