A couple blocks from where I live in residential Tokyo they’ve been building a fairly large condominium complex which is now almost finished. The surrounding residents have been protesting this construction for various reasons and they’ve put up huge signs all around trying to deter people from buying the mansions. It’s really quite futile since the complex is almost finished and there’s nothing they can do about it, but people got to have something to complain about, I guess.

The construction company has been super careful about creating any more friction and encouraging another lawsuit. When it was just a hole in the ground last year, they put up huge walls padded with sound proofing (the grey tarp in the above photo says “sound proof” in japanese) around the entire site to prevent construction noise from disturbing the neighborhood, making it look almost like a circus tent (should’ve gotten a photo of that). It seems to have worked since I never once heard any kind of jack-hammering in the 10 months it took to build the place. They don’t always go to great length to sound-proof but I guess this was a special case. The walls were taken down recently to reveal the completed complex. At the corner, I noticed this sound and vibration measuring device, that measures the sound and vibration levels. Never seen one of these before and wondered if they are common at all construction sites. I screamed at it to see if I could affect the levels but nothing happened. The sensor must be somewhere else. I was thinking of getting one of these for the office to measure the noise levels of some co-workers. Maybe then they’d get the hint.