Good behaviour in the park and other signs

It’s the beginning of summer, so what better way to spend a nice balmy evening than the local park? We all want to let off some fireworks, eat some watermelon and have a BBQ. But not all parks are friendly towards these activities. There’s nothing like a good warning sign telling us what to do, and this one comes complete with cute pictures.

I found this sign in a neighbourhood park in Bunkyo-ku recently, and it has lots of what not to do. Actually, it was a tiny park and if I was a local resident, I wouldn’t want people doing all these things in that park either. But the sign is still a bit of fun, if only for the cute drawings and the way it’s presented.

Let’s stop playing ball games etc that cause trouble to others
Let’s stop bringing dogs into the park
Let’s not use fireworks that go bang or make noise
Let’s stop bicycles and motorcycles from entering
Let’s stop discarding household rubbish and other things that pollute
Let’s take care to look after the plants and facilities!

Remember “Don’t make a dog pee here“? This theme is obviously a problem around residential areas of Tokyo, because there are often signs requesting dog owners to get their dogs to go somewhere else. And if this one was literally translated into English, it would say: “Don’t make a dog pee or crap here”.

Finally for this post, here’s another sign with some bizarre examples of what not to do. No tripods or megaphones?

It makes more sense when you know where the sign is located. This sign is in Todaiji in Nara. The no smoking and no graffiti prohibitions are fairly basic and obvious requirements in a wooden ancient World Heritage site. But the no tripods and no megaphones requirements seem to be aimed at large tour groups, who would get in the way of others if they were all to pose for large group photos or interfere with the peace of the site if tourguides use microphones to get their spiel across.

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