A brand new facility opened final Thursday in Dotombori, the Osaka canal district that’s the most important tourism draw within the coronary heart of central Japan’s largest metropolis. It isn’t a brand new restaurant, purchasing middle, or manzai comedy venue, although. Instead, it’s a designated smoking space.
Last 12 months, the Osaka Minami-Dotonbori Overtourism Countermeasures Promotion Council got here to the conclusion that public service bulletins performed from audio system within the neighborhood had confirmed ineffective in sufficiently discouraging folks from smoking whereas strolling alongside Dotonbori’s streets and leaving cigarette butts behind on the bottom.
With Dotonbori boasting certainly one of Japan’s most vibrant road meals scenes, the members of the council are eager to maintain the place clear, and they also partnered with telecommunications firm NTT Docomo to determine Dotonbori’s first designated outside smoking space, with the hope that by setting apart an space as OK to smoke in, fewer folks will smoke or litter outdoors of its boundaries. NTT offered distant safety digicam gear in order that the unstaffed facility may be monitored from afar.
▼ Osaka Municipal Environment Director Yoshitaka Ikeda, Osaka Minami-Dotonbori Overtourism Countermeasures Promotion Council Chairman Katsuya Kamiyama, and NTT consultant Tomoyuki Okuda on the facility’s opening ceremony
It’s price noting that whereas the loanword “overtourism” is commonly used as of late in Japan to debate adverse results of inbound worldwide, and littered cigarette butts have been a frequent grievance in areas the place they’re occurring, the Osaka Minami-Dotonbori Overtourism Countermeasures Promotion Council hasn’t singled out overseas vacationers in its announcement of the smoking space’s opening, referencing solely the “30 million tourists, including inbound [foreign travelers]” that go to Dotonbori yearly.
The smoking space is positioned on the south aspect of the Tazaemonbashi Bridge, one bridge east of the well-known Ebisubashi Bridge that’s the most important gathering level for sightseers in Dotonbori.
However, establishing a smoking space isn’t essentially an ideal resolution to the problems the council is attempting to deal with. As proven within the images above, the smoking space shouldn’t be enclosed, and it’s not even clear whether or not or not it has a roof. That implies that smoke goes to float out of it, particularly if/when a dense focus of people who smoke gathers. What’s extra, whereas Tazaemonbashi isn’t utilized by as many individuals or have as many close-proximity retailers and eating places as Ebisubashi, it’s not like Tazaemonbashi is a few secluded waterway crossing the place introducing common clouds of smoke isn’t going to trouble anybody who doesn’t have a nicotine habit of their very own.
▼ Tazaemonbashi Bridge
Somewhat like the brand new ordinance requiring extra trash cans in Tokyo’s Shibuya neighborhood, the Dotonbori smoking space appears to be a lesser-of-two-evils try to resolve an issue, so we’ll have to attend and see whether or not the concession finally ends up enhancing the scenario total.
Source, pictures: PR Times
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