G-CANS: silly name, fab place
typed for your pleasure on 29 May 2006, at 10.50 pmSdtrk: ‘Floating Eloy / Baby James’ by Merzbow / Ladybird
Ahh, Japan. Seeing something like the G-CANS underground flood control system just proves that once again, the country is going out of its way to inject the very future itself into our current present, as per usual. Good job, Japan!
If you get lost, you’ll be found eventually. Just keep yelling
The G-Cans Project is a massive project, begun 12 years ago, to build infrastructure for preventing overflow of the major rivers and waterways spidering the city (A serious problem for Tokyo during rainy-season and typhoon season). The underground waterway is the largest in the world and sports five 32m diameter, 65m deep concrete containment silos which are connected by 64 kilometers of tunnel sitting 50 meters beneath the surface.
from an article on boingboing.net
There’s a video on how it works as well. I remember first seeing this used as a set in ‘Ultraman: The Next’, and going oooh and aaah over it. After seeing it used in the live-action Tetsujin No.28 film I began to wonder if it was indeed a real place. And it is! Not only that, but G-CANS is apparently also free to visitors! Very savvy.
I’d love to see that system in action. From a vantage point above the water level, naturally
Random similar posts, for more timewasting:
Transform and... double-park on May 31st, 2007
Not as fun, but certainly safer, than a fireman's axe on October 31st, 2004
May 30th, 2006 at 8.26 pm
Wow! Now THAT’S a place I would love to get lost in! (Assuming I had a float tube, some matches, and an iPod-thingy.) Well, and some other things as well LOL…
I’ll bet the echoes are awesome!
May 30th, 2006 at 10.04 pm
PBS –
You forgot to add ‘some sort of camera’, and ‘a Vespa’. 🙂
*thinking* Wouldn’t that be a hell of a place to hold a concert? It’d have to be something Noise-related, cos contemporary music wouldn’t hold up well with all the echoing, but whitehouse or Masonna might do well there. Hell, I’ve still got my Moog and all my effects pedals.. hmm..
June 2nd, 2006 at 2.50 pm
I hear there’s a place out west where there’s a large underground city/office complex like this. Not so tall, however, and it isn’t intended as an overgrown storm runoff.
I think it was an old mine of some sort, and it has been converted into a monstrously huge underground city thing.
Not as cool looking as this, though.
I wonder how this structure would fare in a major earthquake…
June 3rd, 2006 at 11.22 am
SafeT –
A subterranean city?? Do tell! I’d love to see something like that, as short of building cities vertically, I’m all about building cities underground. Well, not all about, but you know what I mean.
Anything to get the hell away from the heat of the sun is a Grand Idea..