I've heard this same melody in various anime, always the same or nearly the same. What is it? My first guess was a cross walk signal or an advertisement, but that makes no sense.
Here are two tiny wav files in an rar, one from Paranoia Agent, and one from Boogiepop Phantom: http://www2.evilshare.com/b8232720-13a8-102b-a749-0007e90cfb90
Your guess is correct.
There is a signal that informs that the signal changed into blue in Japan for the
visually handicapped person because of the sound.
By the way, the name of a song is tooryanse(とおりゃんせ).
Heaps of shows use this as a motif, don't they. I remember when I was first getting into anime, wondering if traffic lights were really like that, and then when I finally managed to go to Japan I got to hear a couple, although it was something like 1% of the total number of traffic lights I crossed at...
Also, isn't it interesting that the Japanese call the green light blue? I mean even when I was over there, it still looked green to me. ;-)
There's a page on WIkipedia about that too, turns out heaps of languages lack the colour green. Japanese has at least one word for green though, which makes it all the more baffling to me.
>>5 The word "green" is recent, about a generation. Older people used a word that meant "green" as well as "blue", hence the confusion. That confusion should go away as the old generation goes away.
i was recently in an anthropology class, there was a tribe that used the same word for blue or green. they would specify whether they meant "like the sky" or "like the trees".
i don't really believe what you said about the older generation though. which culture are you referring to?
"Modern Japanese has a separate word for green (緑 midori)"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ao_(color)
"In contemporary usage, "aoi" and "midori" are quite close to "blue" and "green," respectively. But in the past, "aoi" covered both these meanings"
http://ask.metafilter.com/45811/Oh-hes-got-blue-eyes-oh-hes-got-green-eyes-oh-hes-got-gray-eyes
"Its just that aoi can ALSO mean green, though people now tend to use midori for green"
http://community.livejournal.com/linguaphiles/1067454.html
"Modern Japanese also has a word for green (緑, midori?), although this was not always so."
"Educational materials distinguishing green and blue only came into use after World War II"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinguishing_blue_from_green_in_language
These descriptions are not very accrate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_colors_of_Japan
3. Japanese words for blue and green were too complicated for modern primary education. Thus, they were simplified in "educational" color system under the Occupation after WW2.
Original color system is like below.
藍 (ai) indigo BLUE
青 (ao) BLUE
蒼 (ao) opaque BLUE
碧 (ao) bluish GREEN
碧 (midori) bluish GREEN
翠 (midori) indigo GREEN
緑 (midori) GREEN
Putting it all toghether, both "ao" and "midori" have three kanji with three colors, and 碧 reads both "ao" and "midori" while both mean green.
4. To be exact, Western green and Japanese midori are different colors.
Green #00B16B
緑 (midori) #008000
翠 (midori) #00793D
5. When the first traffic signal in Japan was put into place in 1930, newspapers reported that the colors were aka(red), ki(yellow) and ao(blue). It is said, that was because people of that age were educated that the three primary colors are red, blue and yellow, thus more memorable. After WW2, the usage of "ao" was officially corrected to "midori" once, but was rescinded soon. One of the reasons was that "ao" trips off the tongue better for its lesser syllables than "midori".
>5. When the first traffic signal in Japan [...]
>After WW2, the usage of "ao" was officially corrected to "midori" once, but was rescinded soon.
I assume you are talking about the traffic lights only, and not green[midori]/blue[ao] in general? Yes, the traffic lights still use ao as naming for the stop color. My guess is that this is because some traffic lights ended being built with an actual blue stop light, so the confusion cannot officially be lifted yet for these. Or that some officials are being stubborn... they are probably from the old generation. :)
Orange car is orange. Orange cat is orange. Brown cat is brown.
Opaque blue?
Also to be exact, Western green is a range of colours, and when referring to a specific colour, that colour is #00FF00.
Oh, hey, I remember that.
I heard it when crossing the street somewhere in Osaka, and when I heard it again in Boogiepop Phantom I had something like a flashback.
RGB can not uniquely define a colour by any stretch of the imagination. For that kind of thing, you need to use something like CIE colourspaces.
And not only that, "green" does not even have a specific definition like you seem to think.
> Western green is a range of colours
Excuse me "Randon Anime Otaku" IM WAY INTERESTED in the rar you had but as i clicked on the link well i found out it was deleted, may you PLEASE send them to my mail please please please my mail is purple_paper at hotmail.com, THANKKK YOU SOOOO MUUUCHHHHHHH ;_;
I don't have the rar anymore. I can try to find what episode it was from, record and re upload it for you tomorrow.