Unbelievable how things have changed. I guess considering most of those cities were leveled half a century ago, they had a pretty clean slate to work with. I think they should not have colored them though... looks goofy.
Tokyo especially has undergone many changes. The 1923 earthquake destroyed a large part of the city (wooden houses all went up in flames because the quake hit the city at a time when everyone was cooking). After that, many concrete buildings were constructed, of which most were destroyed again by the infamous B-32 bombers during the Second World War/Great Pacific War. Just amazing that Tokyo is one of the most modern and largest cities in the world today.
Wow some of the towns look like they are ripped right from America in that time period. Marunouchi especially. Its great seeing how different things were. Are there many modern towns in Japan that still have the traditional old style houses?
Lots do, even Tokyo. It's pretty random though. You'll get these really ugly aluminum roofed houses out in the countryside and beautiful traditional style housing in the middle of a Tokyo suburb. There's very little in the way of planning permission, unlike the UK, so unfortunately a lot of Japan's beautiful countryside and heritage has been spoiled
Exactly. Great big concrete monstrosities in the middle of the mountains, areas of natural beauty that would be protected anywhere else in the world. A lot of it comes from 'pork barrel' politics - politicians securing votes at home by bringing horrendously expensive and often completely pointless public works projects to their constituency, paid for by public savings. You'll often seen huge bridges built, connecting a remote country road to the sheer cliff face on the opposite side of a valley, huge multi-lane highways where even a dual carriageway would be overkill or large airports built to serve small country towns. Absolute madness. Here are some stats: - Japan's expressways are set to increase from 6861 to 9342 kilometres and forest roads from 127,000 to 270,000 kilometres. - Extension of the shinkansen line in Hokuriku and Kyushu at a projected cost of 7 trillon yen ($50 billion) - The government is committed to build at least ten nuclear power stations over the next ten years. - A new US Marine base in Okinawa at the cost of 1 trillion yen ($7 billion). - Central and local government, together with corporations, have 'invested' 630 trillion yen ($4.75 trillion) in the last twelve years. And my personal favourite... - The 'super-dyking' process, designed to protect Japan's major rivers against a once-in-two-hundred flood is also proceeding as planned, however it is expected to take 1000 years to complete.
It's truly horrible. Don't come to Japan if you are politically/environmentally-minded, 'cause you'll go crazy at all the corruption (in more than just the first sense of the word.)
