Value Village ／ Everyday know-how
This answer is a draft. It stays unpublished until legal review and source verification are complete.
Every day at 17:00 (16:30 in winter in some towns, 18:00 in summer in others), a melody — "Yūyake Koyake", "Greensleeves", the local school song — plays from poles across Japanese towns. Visitors think it is a curfew or a charming quirk. It is a daily test of the municipal disaster broadcasting system, and the same speakers will one day say something you need to understand.
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Name | Bōsai gyōsei musen (防災行政無線) — municipal disaster administration radio: outdoor loudspeaker poles (屋外拡声子局) and indoor receivers (戸別受信機) in many rural homes |
| Coverage | Nearly all municipalities; ~90% have the synchronous outdoor system; dense cities rely more on phones |
| The daily chime | A test broadcast ("時報"), usually 17:00, some towns noon and/or morning; seasonal shifts (16:30 in winter, 18:00 in summer); melodies chosen locally — "Yūyake Koyake", "Furusato", Westminster chimes, the town song |
| Informal function | "Children, go home" — schools and parents use it as the outdoor play cut-off; the elderly use it to close shutters |
| What else it carries | Tsunami/earthquake warnings, evacuation information (levels 3–5), heavy-rain and typhoon notices, heat-stroke alerts ("please drink water and use air conditioning"), missing persons (esp. dementia wandering), bear/wild boar sightings, planned power/water outages, vaccination and health-check reminders, the noon "lunch" chime, fire-drill announcements, New Year and Obon greetings in small towns |
| Sirens | Tsunami warning: a specific siren pattern (e.g. 3-second blasts) followed by "tsunami keihō"; evacuation: chime + spoken order; J-Alert (missile, large quake): the national alarm tone. The patterns are printed in the municipal disaster guide |
| Can't hear it | Rain and wind swallow the sound, and many complaints are that it's too loud at night — the reason municipalities also run phone apps, area mail, a telephone playback number (テレホンサービス) and cable TV. Register for your town's email/LINE alerts |
[Verify] Coverage percentage with the latest MIC survey; siren patterns are municipality-specific — cite the relevant town's disaster guide.
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https://www.soumu.go.jp/main_sosiki/joho_tsusin/
https://www.fdma.go.jp/mission/prepare/transmission/
https://www.bousai.go.jp/oukyu/hinanjouhou/
⚠️ Editorial note: the source URLs above were identified by search. Our working environment cannot reach go.jp domains, so the contents have not been checked against the text. Verify every source before publication and record who checked it and when.
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