Tokyo's Shibuya enacts ban on street drinking at night in some areas

Tokyo's Shibuya Ward will ban drinking on the street at night all year round in some areas starting i

That includes hachiko area

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20240617/k10014483431000.html

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JGovt want people to drink but local Govt such Shibuya, doesn't like the idea.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/17/japan-government-launches-competition-to-get-people-drinking-alcohol-drinks-tax-revenue

Little by little, this will spread. Japan is turning into a sad place with not much joy left.

Standing around convenience stores drinking Strong Zero's at all hours of the night. A real eye-sore for local residents, makes Japan look so "cheap".

I commute there early in the morning. The streets are often a smelly mess, a situation that has been around long before the current tourism boom. Even now, on early Monday mornings nearly all the stragglers I see are Japanese, usually the nightclub staff and diehard customers, sitting or squatting on the street amid discarded shochu tins, cigarette butts, and yes, vomit. Ugh. The last thing you want to see or smell at 7 a.m. on a sunny day.

The binge drinking is pretty bad though. I wouldn't want this as a regular thing in my area either. No problem with public drinking, but loitering is the issue.

Should be in all areas.....

I struggle to undestand why there are some poeple opposed to the banning....

Also baning street drinking is not the same as promoting responsible drinking

FurbyToday 09:12 am JST

Standing around convenience stores drinking Strong Zero's at all hours of the night. A real eye-sore for local residents, makes Japan look so "cheap".

As opposed to all the pachinko parlors and hostess bars and the touts blocking the street.

Missing from this article is the fact that the rule has NO PENALTIES... So Just like Halloween, you can thank them for their advice and continue drinking what ever you want.

That said, they should arrest and charge any unlawful behavior whether alcohol fueled or not.

JGovt want people to drink but local Govt such Shibuya, doesn't like the idea.

Both want people to drink, just inside business so a lot of profit can be obtained from it. The ones that doesn't like the idea are the people in charge of public health since it means much more costs than whatever benefits could be obtained by the government from people drinking.

It won't stop me.

Not everybody has the capacity of understanding the wishes of locals and act accordingly, some people even take pride of being self centered and purposefully act against those wishes.

Coming from a country with prudish views on public drinking, I always marveled at the freedom Japanese people had to drink freely on the streets when I first came here. Every now and then one might have to step over a puke puddle but it was usually a welcomed freedom. It nicely countered other restrictive aspects of Japanese culture.

Japan is changing for the worst in some cases.

Begging foreigners to come here and help with the stagnate economy to only charge them more for rooms and food and sightseeing is not good.

Now no drinking on the streets. This is also slyly / subtly aimed at foreigners.

My friend told me that this law and ones like it coming in sinjuku are befsuse people are gathering and buying cheaper drinks at convenience stores and enjoying their time sitting out outside instead of spending double and triple inside. It’s just a way to suck more money out. Most of the standing drink vending machines are gone at Shimbashi now and they are just limiting places for affordable gatherings. This isn’t about behaviors of young people but a way to get people to frequent businesses that are failing from high costs to run.

As long as I can still knock back a few tall boys at 6am in a gutter of my choosing I'm good.

And how will they enforce this ban? Will there be fines? Penalties? Jail time? A ban is useless if it's toothless as this seems to be.

....buying cheaper drinks at convenience stores and enjoying their time sitting out outside instead of spending double and triple inside. It’s just a way to suck more money out. Most of the standing drink vending machines are gone at Shimbashi now and they are just limiting places for affordable gatherings....

This point of view is really out of touch with reality. "enjoying their time sitting outside"... the person saying this kind of thing has never had to wait outside for a long time, in either the heat of summer of the cold of winter or the rain or windy... with no bathroom and nowher to sitdown.

... or maybe they are in perpetual state of Collage student psyque.

If you're gonna import a load of Australian and American tourists you need Australian and American style laws where strict controls over alcohol are enforced to stop things getting out of hand.

Now no drinking on the streets. This is also slyly / subtly aimed at foreigners.

No, it is not, it is aimed to people that visit the locations no matter from where they come, if the situation you describe were true foreigners would be the ones not being affected since it is a situation already in place in their place of origin. In reality it is still allowed except on those locations where it has become a problem, people can still drink this way, just need to choose a place where this is not such a nuisance.

And how will they enforce this ban? Will there be fines? Penalties? Jail time? A ban is useless if it's toothless as this seems to be.

This has been already done in Halloween for example, and was very effective.

Personally, I have enjoyed my occasions drinking tall boys out in front of the combini. I don't always want to go to bars and deal with the loudness/having to yell over other people so my friends can hear me, or the cigarette smoke, or the saabisu that comes just for getting a table. I've gotten so frustrated with izakayas that I've decided to stop dealing with them altogether; not to mention, recently many of these places have begun developing a reputation for not being particularly friendly to non Japanese folk. The chains are generally fine, because they actually strictly enforce good customer service standards across the board, but a lot of these local guys act like they're the king of the castle and that because they have a clientele firmly established, they can treat perceived "outsiders" like trash. If that is their prerogative they can do so, but it becomes a stereotype and affects other businesses as well, so for me, I have a pretty negative opinion on bars in Japan unless there is a strong foreigner customer base.

Maybe more limitations on public drinking will cause me to drink less and end up being a good thing overall. To be honest, I would personally just prefer if I could do cannabis as an alternative instead, the scientifically and statistically proven superior intoxicant; but alas, this is not be, for the Japanese government actually does want you to be an alcoholic, so long as the money you're spending helps supplement the oyaji Yakitori shop owner who's not getting the pension he was promised. It's all so tiresome.