Heaven's Ceiling

Under the Expressway.
As everywhere in the world, even here are people of nomadic existence.
Often people too muddled to live an ordinary life.

Shirokane
In playgrounds that often are abandoned as result of the ageing of society.


On a bench on Odaiba beach.

Akasaka
In a fully paved park.

Bunkyo ku
On the riverside.

Ueno park
Besides that we mainly see orderly homeless who try to live as good as possible with a minimum of means. A church celebrates a special Mass.

Ueno park
Remarkable are those blue sheets. Each respectable homeless has one.

There are several stories on the backgrounds of these homeless. A popular one among westerners says these people have become jobless and cannot bear the disgrace under the eyes of their family. Although many people serve in lifelong employment in one company, even when they do not perform satisfactory by any standard, Japan does have a labour market.

Another story deals with finance, of course. There are people in desperate deep debts, think only of the addicts who are one of the family in the Pachinko parlours. Loan agents do not hesitate to hire gangsters to collect debts. Yakuza (organised crime) threatens your family, comes banging on your door at night or calls you in the office twenty five times per day. As a result ten thousands of people disappear every year in a process known as Yonige, ”Midnight Run”. They leave their homes, change identity and move to another city, all to hide from the enforcers of Japan’s consumer loans.
Traditionally people must clear all debts by the end of the year, so New Year’s Eve is the premier time for Yonige. The 80.000 who fled in het night of 1996 had nearly doubled by 1999, to 130.000.
So popular is the Midnight Run that it has spawned a new business, Benriyasan (Mr. Convenient), facilitators who help families flee their homes and who take care of their possessions while they are on the run. In 1999, Japanese television featured a new drama, “The Midnight Run Shop” , whose hero devises schemes for people to evade gangster lean enforcers. It’s a Mission Impossible for debtors,...
Source: Alex Kerr, Dogs and Demons, 2001.

Ara river

And it is clear we are not dealing with muddled people here. The improvised dwellings are neat. They sit on a wooden platform and everything is tidied up. The gray shelter even has an overhead door on a rack.

Sumida river

Read more about the homeless in Tokyo on http://unhoused.livejournal.com/22478.html

De Icing

A little intermezzo this time. Tokyo has a winter without snow for the first time in 130 years. We can cut a corner on that. For winter images we have to dive in the archive.
Some time ago we found a piece of ingenious labour in a city near a ski resort. Above you can see an average ‘sidewalk’ in Japan. A vague mess with white striping. Far left a flubby hose on the sidewalk, connected to a plastic pipe.


Connected to the pipe is a hose to do the odd car cleaning.
In the street is a concrete strip with a metal thingy in every so many feet.


And from every metal thingy runs a trace of mineral deposit on the asphalt.

And all hoses appear to be leaking!

And not a bit. The answer to this riddle: the street is being de-iced here by spraying hot water. Excuse me? Hot water?

Yes, and this is how the system with the metal sprinklers looks. Very chique indeed. And when the street is cleaned, the tap is closed. I hope everybody is mumbling about spilling energy and so, as it is a bit crazy to spoil all that costly hot water. Well done. The environment is in good hands with you.

However, no sweat. We already wrote about the Onsen the Japanese hot springs. The hot water comes directly from the springs here. Almost boiling and on its own power. And the dissolved minerals make it work like anti freeze agent.

Splendid system. And more environmental friendly is not possible.

Kitty in Tokyo キッテイは東京で

Frank’s mother is on a visit. All the way from Geldrop!


As there is a time difference of eight hours with the Netherlands, a sturdy jetlag is easy to get. First day bravely stay awake over a good coffee at Starbucks. It is packed again. Teenagers doing their homework.


Look, this really is a fine present.
A Rubik's cube in ball shape. With a world map in Japanese!


At home we rolled out the stretcher. Frank is checking all options. Like is it possible to watch telly when the couch gets crowded? Might do.


On a stroll we find wooden shoes and a frog, reminds us of the Netherlands, often nicknamed Frogland. Wooden shoes have floating capabilities ;-)

But then surprises again. Until what time is this information centre open? Really?

Roppongi Hills is an enormous project for living and working. In the Roppongi area developers bought all the separate lots and created a large project. The process of purchasing all the land took seventeen years. Today you see skyscrapers for living and working. The surrounding area is public space with shops and greenery.

There is even a Japanese garden.

National Museum in Ueno. It is a beautiful museum with a great collection. Here is one of the highlights.

The Fugaku Sanjûrokkei, also known as Thirty six views on Mount Fuji made by Katsushika Hokusai in 1831. The Big Wave at Kanagawa is one of them. An explanation from Wikipedia:

His best known work is The Big Wave at Kanagawa, in which a few tiny boats try to sail the giant waves. The biggest wave is very impressive and looks like a monster with claws. This wave shows the force of nature and as well the force of the rowing men in the boats. By the way it was not proven in Hokusai’s time that such waves really exist, but nowadays science is convinced of it. Such waves were also seen in Tokyo Bay, were Hokusai most likely located the event.
In the background is mount Fuji but Hokusai probably also depicted it in the upfront wave as it exactly matches the silhouette of mount Fuji from another viewpoint. The Big Wave has inspired many artist since, as well as cartoonists of political prints.
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katsushika_Hokusai

Outside again and time for a break. A man pops by for a chat in fluent English. Lasted half an hour altogether. Many “Today’s youngsters” and so on. While recently we read that Dutch children are the happiest in the world, ‘family’ is probably the biggest issue Japanese society is struggling with. We see commercials on the television suggesting parents to talk with their kids. The news shows images of classmates in tears when another teenager took his/her own life. The newspaper writes frequently about teenagers killing one or both parents.

This parent is taken care of properly. After this picture was taken she decided it might indeed be better to take of her winter coat... :-)

Tip of our teacher in Japanese: take the waterbus from Asakusa to Odaiba. Great tour of approximately one hour by which you can see Tokyo from the water. And that gives a different view indeed.

Between all that high rise such an antique lantern.

It was a beautiful day.

Imelda's Dream 靴

This time a special for Pien en Meis!

Tokyo Marathon dictates today’s fashion.

Sneaker time!

Wireless

My current job is collecting information on the built environment in Tokyo. In what kind of city do people live here? What kind of buildings? What kind of streets?

I cycle the whole city (already 2.000 km done) and I see the most crazy buildings.

And I also take pictures of what is happening between them.

And crazye buildings they certainly have here. This is a hotel and what you see here is the front indeed.

But also buildings that do have windows.

Architecture is not on a high level here. The government pays little attention to it, zoning plans are not very sophisticated and building codes are so strict and rigid that ugliness seems the only option. Not to mention the remaining space: the streets.

I wouldn’t care if anybody would remark on the above pictures that each one shows those ugly power lines. I would even appreciate it if you did. As it is undisputedly ugly all that technical wiring up there in the sky. And it hangs truly throughout Japan.

When you look up on any crossing you will see this.

How can this be? How can a civilised country look like this? Alex Kerr researched it for his book 'Dogs and Demons'. Here is a part of chapter 8.

Japan is the world’s only advanced country that does not bury telephone cables and electric lines. While a handful of neighbourhoods , such as the central Marunouchi business district of Tokyo, have succeeded in laying cables underground, these are mostly expensive showpieces. Even the most advanced new residential districts customarily do not bury cables, as I discovered when I was working on the Sumitomo Trust Bank/Trammell Crow project on Kobe’s Rokko Island in 1987. Kobe City touted the island – brand new landfill in the harbour – as a super modern, futuristic neighbourhood. With telephone poles. In the countryside, a “priority policy” dictates that until every large city has buried every one of its power lines, which the Construction Ministry is encouraging them not to do, no rural area can do the same with support from the central government.

Here, in a nutshell, is Japan’s bureaucratic dynamic at work. The first stage, the starting point after Japan’s defeat in World War II, is the poor people, strong state principle. Central planners considered the extra effort and the expense required to do such things as burying cables luxurious and wasteful, drawing needed resources away from industry.

The second stage, policy freeze, came in the early 1970s. Unaccustomed to burying cables, Japan’s bureaucrats came to believe that the nation shouldn’t, indeed couldn’t, bury them. They cooked up justifications for the policy, such as the added dangers in the event of earthquakes. (In fact, a nation that is likely to have frequent earthquakes should bury lines, as became clear in the Kobe quake of 1995. Toppled poles carrying live wires were one of the biggest dangers, blocking traffic and wreaking havoc with rescue efforts.) Another argument was that Japan had uniquely damp soil, which mad it harder to bury lines there than in other countries. (This belongs to the “Special Snow” school of thought, made famous when trade negotiators in the 1980s asserted that “Japanese snow is unsuitable for skis.”) The inner logic is that Japan’s uniqueness forbids it to bury cables. Since burying cables is not what Japan has done, it is un-Japanese to do so. The third stage is addiction. Making concrete and steel pylons has become a profitable cartelized business; meanwhile, utilities have a free hand to plan power grids without regard for the look of urban or rural neighbourhoods, for the inconvenience posed by poles jutting into narrow roads, or for anything else. And since the power companies have not learned the skill of efficient, safe, and well-designed cable laying and have never had to factor in the costs, today they simply cannot afford them. Meanwhile, the Construction Ministry, driven by the uniquely damp soil” ideology, has mandated protective coverings for underground cable strong enough to survive the apocalypse, making it the most expensive in the world.

[einde citaat/vertaling]

This is the business district Marunouchi. Indeed no lines on poles anymore. Great! In the centre you can see Tokyo station. It shows great resemblance with Amsterdam Central Station the Rijksmuseum and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

In 1868 policies changed to joining the western world. Imitating western architecture was part of it. In the same period railways were introduced. That is why in Europe you can find many grand stations in Victorian style, the fashion of that time. And of course Tokyo station shouldn’t do for less.

This neighbourhood has its own particularities though. It is the direct surrounding of the Imperial Palace. Therefore you can still see Tokyo Station form the palace gardens. And it is probably why here attention is being paid to the appearance of the built environment. Apparently the idea is that this historical area shouldn’t be dominated by high rise (tatame), whereas the tremendous ground prices demand to do so (honne). And thus a probably typical Japanese solution: high rise with a base that looks like a nineteenth century building.

Tokyo South East 東京南東

(The history of Amsterdam South East shows remarkable similarities with Tokyo South East.)


For walking mortals in Tokyo, the view on the sky can be limited. We already introduced the phenomenon of the Metropolitan Expressway a few months ago. Today we go by metro to Odaiba, the south eastern part of Tokyo.


The track runs above ground here. The ride offers a spectacular view.


The Rainbowbridge connects central Tokyo to the new land of Odaiba.

The centre of Tokyo is near Tokyo Bay, a bay of the Pacific Ocean. During the economic bubble in the seventies and eighties land was on high demand in central. Mountains in Chibas region were demolished and the out coming debris was used to create a landfill in Tokyo Bay, the present Odaiba. It was quite an enterprise compared to the Dutch Flevo polders. For Dutch polders only the surrounding dykes are made. The enclosed water is pumped out and the see floor becomes the new land. Not so in Japan. The whole thing is filled and topped up. And Tokyo bay is quite a bit deeper than the Dutch lake of IJsselmeer. For the construction of Odaiba several cubic kilometers of material were moved.

Near Osaka comparable operations have taken place for the Construction of Kansai International Airport. This airport is on an artificial island in the sea. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansai_International_Airport.

On the other side of the water lies Tokyo midtown.

The land was claimed and big buildilng could start. The metro was built. And then the economic bubble burst. In 1991 the house of cards collapsed and a huge amount of useful land remained bare. The investments done by the government will not return sufficient earnings. Odaiba is about to become a financial disaster.

Meanwhile some places show newly built. Mainly large scale projects. They contrast with the vastness of the empty areas.

In an attempt to vitalise Odaiba an amusement park was created with a ferris wheel. Next to it a complex of fair halls. We had the Design Festa over there, see the archive.

Large scale mass housing next to the metro station. Similarities with Amsterdam South East. The white buildling is fun. The grey thing looks like a shadow but is not.

Ah look, a corporate building at last! Fuji television, a right wing conservative channel, has its head quarters here. It was designed by, the son of Kenzo Tange, the godfather of post war Japanese architecture.

Why such a extremely expensive design in times of economic downfall? It may have to do with the two faces in Japanese society, honne and tatame. Tatame is 'as it ought to be'. All that politeness, proper dressing and the tea ceremony and so on all belong to the Tatame. Honne stands for the real intentions. And those may be very different. One should not decline an invitation (tatame) when for example timing is inconvenient (honne). You can answer with: "The time is a bit...er..." and it is perfectly clear to everybody that you cannot come. No further question. You wrapped the honne in the tatame. In Japan people are very skilled in juggling with the desirable thing and the real thing.

And not only inter human traffic is concerned. It goes with everything. Even in (governmental) finance. Odaiba may be a disaster (honne). Economy is in low tide (honne). We are doing very well and we can afford an overpriced building in Odaiba (tatame). Got it? The World of economics and finance in Japan are very creative with honne and tatame. Banks bring bad debts in separate companies, so called kiting. Thus the bad debts fly from the books of the bank (tatame) while effectively the bank is already bankrupt (honne).

The principle of tatame and honne sits so deep that it could happen that in the international bank traffic a scandal with the US occurred. A Japanese bank got on the wrong side with US financial authorities over such bad debts. Loans to companies in the US lacked cover of sufficient assets. The Japanese were shocked. How could the Americans have so little respect for Japanese culture?

Source: Alex Kerr, Dogs and Demons, the fall of modern Japan. Penguin Books 2002. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Kerr

Back to Tokyo. The metro runs over Rainbow bridge through a kind of cage.

Rainbow bridge is high for sea traffic reasons. In order to land the road and the metro have to go down again. That requires space and therefore the road runs down in a loop making you cross the same bridge on a lower level.

The metro track really looks like a roller coaster.

Cramped construction: Airco-units of the buildings under the tracks.

Stacked sections of the Metropolitan Expressway.

A few people can be seen in this fully built up environment.

An advantage of this metro is that it is unmanned. You can take the drivers seat!

We are being taken over by the high speed train. This is Nozomi 500, the fastest shinkansen nowadays. It is round like the London Underground and totally grey. Like an eel.

Shimbashi station. Doors on the platform edge. The train is not manned, remember? Also metro lines with manned trains have doors on the edge sometimes. To prevent suicide.

End of the ride!