Scandalous pricing in Kawagoe during Golden Week

I had cause to be in the tourist area of Kawagoe this morning and was taken aback when I saw several parking lots with scandalous temporary pricing systems for the period of Golden Week. Some of the parking lot companies are price-gouging, charging 500 yen per 30 minutes with no daily maximum.

As you can see above, they have signs up (in Japanese only) indicating that there are temporary parking fees from April 25th to May 10th. And as you can see, this is one of the (far too many) parking lots charging 500 yen for 30 minutes and not applying a maximum daily fee. So, if you left your car here for 24 hours it would cost you 24,000 yen.

Moreover, the period extends past what is reasonably considered as Golden Week. It is quite common for people to take a few extra annual leave days to extend their holiday period, but using Golden Week as an excuse to charge extra for the period from April 25th to May 10th is excessive. Overall, I find this to be practically extortionist and / or criminal-adjacent, and absurd at the least.

The photos in this post are of two different parking lot companies. Between them they operate several of the parking lots in Kawagoe. They were once fairly priced and I often used them, but during the pandemic they hiked their prices and I haven't used their parking lots since. And after seeing this scandalous behavior, I will never be using them again. But judging by how empty their parking lots were around Kawagoe today, I think I might not be the only one who feels this way!