Tunes

Daily life is full of tunes.

It starts in bed when you wake up to the sound of the ice cream truck playing its regular song.
Only it's not an ice cream truck.
It's a garbage truck.
!!!
Why the entire neighbourhood needs to hear them is a mystery to me.
I always hear this song as I wake up; I've listened to it a lot in my sleep, and this has no doubt done some damage to my subconscious. I'll find myself randomly humming the Garbage Truck Song at various points throughout the week.

Then it's off to your Japanese lesson. As you go to the station you can hear the pedestrian crossing playing the 'crossing the road' song.

You go into the station and wait for the train. The train's impeding arrival is announced with a mere chime, but once the train arrives, you are treated to the 'doors are closing' song.

At some point during your Japanese lesson you're guaranteed to hear another neighbourhood truck, this one selling 'oishii mono! oishii mono!' (yummy things! yummy things!)

Off to work, and after hearing a dozen 'doors are closing' songs (they vary from station to station; I heard they used to have the same song for every station but it caused depression in commuters!!!), it's into Kawasaki station. Various songs accompany the ads on the Kawasaki big screen, but I always hope for the Azalea one, which I call the 'Kawasaki theme song'.

My own office building has a theme song too. In our school we have 70s and 80s pop/rock music playing. Recently there's been quite a bit of U2, Tears for Fears, The Police, and Billy Joel.

Anyway, virtually everywhere you go around here has music playing; even outdoor shopping streets or romantic harbour bridges have piped muzak in the background.
The 100 yen store has a chirpy 'do-do-do-do-do (duh-duh), do-do-do-do-do.... one price shop! one price shop de gozaimasu!' tune on loop (and I mean on LOOP. If you're in the store for five minutes, you'll hear it at least a dozen times. It's kind of surprising that there's not more violent crime in this country.)
The supermarket has a catchy tune, in tone similar to the opening theme to 'Tonari no Totoro', only with new lyrics ('go shopping! have fun shopping!')
The convenience store has some incomprehensible 'para-riru-rara-riru-nananana' composition.

A very high number of these everyday songs sound like children's songs, so if you have highly developed musical sensibilities, you may want to Avoid.

The last, and my favourite, song of the day, comes from the corner outside my own local train station. There are two karaoke-kan there, and rarely a night goes by when I'm not treated to the sounds of some drunken salaryman torturing some Jpop classic. I've yet to hear someone who can actually sing, but you have to admire their gusto all the more.