The World is Talking About…

Gridskipper: Under Tokyo

Oh, this one I know:

Under Tokyo

I'm sure the last thing you'll want to see during your travels is a city's sewer system -- in fact, the less we know about what happens in the dark and wet, the better. But browsing through the this gallery of shots from Tokyo's underground, I think you'll agree there's something pretty interesting going on down there. Looking like a cross between Japanese anime and one of Ken Adam's classic set pieces for the James Bond films, I'm surprised they don't offer tours. Then again, since photos don't transmit smell, maybe there is a reason.

UPDATE: Actually, they do offer tours.

The correspondent gets a big part of it wrong: it's NOT a sewer, it's a flood-control project, with the unlikely English-language monicker of "G-Cans Project". As such, the only smell on offer, I'm sure, is possibly that of cold damp concrete.

It's even been featured in a Land Rover TV commercial (requires Flash: click on "Range Rover Sport" when the page loads to see the Tokyo section) and print ad. And despite what's shown in the commercial, it's actually way up in the northern outskirts of Tokyo (actually, in Saitama prefecture), and nowhere near Shinjuku (where the commercial begins) or Yokohama (where it ends).

Tours are possible, it appears, but since they're conducted only in Japanese, they require you to bring someone to act as a translator (my guess is that they're worried about foreign visitors not understanding the safety rules). If you speak Japanese or know someone who does, call them at 048-747-0281 to make arrangements, which is something I ought to be doing myself someday.

Access from Tokyo:

The nearest train station seems to be Minami-Sakurai station on the Tobu Noda line, and there are a variety of ways to get there:

Method 1: From Tokyo Station, go to platform 3 and catch the Keihin-Tohoku line north to Omiya (25 minutes away). Transfer to the Tobu Noda line eastbound towards Kasukabe, Kashiwa, or Funabashi, and get off at Minami-Sakurai station (11 stations, 28 minutes away). Don't know what the bus lines are, so it's probably simplest to take a taxi from the station rather than walk for 2 kilometers.

Method 2: From Tokyo Station, go to platform 3 or 4 and catch either the Keihin-Tohoku or Yamanote line north to Akihabara (2 stops, 3 minutes). Exit and transfer to the Hibiya subway line going towards Kita-Senju station (6 stations, 12 minutes). Depending on the train you're on, either transfer at Kita-Senju station (if the train terminates there) or simply stay on it (if it continues) to the Tōbu Isesaki Line to Kasukabe (6-19 stations, depending on whether it's a local or express, about 28 minutes). Transfer at Kasukabe to the Tobu Noda line eastbound towards Kashiwa or Funabashi, and get off at Minami-Sakurai station (2 stops, 7 minutes away). Take a taxi.

Method 3: Use this website to figure whichever route works for you to reach Minami-Sakurai station. There, take a taxi.

Map Legend:

南桜井 = Minami-Sakurai station
春日部市= Kasukabe, the name of the city
首都圏外郭放水路 = Official Japanese name for the project

Annotating Gridskipper

Gridskipper.com looks like a very interesting travel site, one which stresses style, design, and good food , but in an accessible, non-snobby way. Its postings includes handy embedded Google Maps, allowing you to see exactly where the places it talks about are.

Well, not exactly.

For its Tokyo entries -- a city where most of the streets don't have names and business cards include maps -- Gridskipper falls down completely. Here, maps are practically mandatory, since the street address system is more of a co-ordinate system, and giving the English names isn't much help when the local street maps are written in kanji. A determined person can eventually ferret out where places are -- phone numbers, being the same in English or Japanese, are a great help -- put someone there needs to get on the ball there.

So hence this experiment. I'm going to try to make some maps myself. The one on the right is for a recent item:

Coffee Saloon Kimoto

This morning I went to quite possibly the smallest cafe I've ever seen. Coffee Saloon Kimoto (1-5-1 Yakumo, 03-3717-5687 -- it's just a few minutes walk from Toritsu Daigaku station on the Toyoko line) takes its tiny triangle shape from the its allotted land plot, which was quite literally crammed between two neighboring buildings.

Featured in Japanese architectural firm Atelier Bow-Wow's book it's a perfect example of urban development contributing to the creation of unusual spaces. Coffee Saloon Kimoto is even more than just an instance of innovative architecture, it's a cozy little cafe. And I mean really small -- barely larger than the typical American bathroom -- but it will put a smile on your face as you walk in and are greeted by the owner, Mr. Kimoto, and his wife, and take one of the seven available seats.

Map Legend

都立大学 = Toritsudaigaku station
八雲１丁目５−１= 1-5-1 Yakumo, the address
東急東横線 = Toyoko Line, from Shibuya (渋谷), six stops out and between Gakugeidaigaku and Jiyūgaoka stations.

Kazakhstan is Talking About...the Return of the Sea

Aral Sea's Return Revives Withered Villages

Dam Begins to Diminish Ecological Disaster of Soviet-Era Irrigation

By Peter Finn, Washington Post Foreign Service

Tastupek, Kazakhstan - In the cool of one recent evening, after tending to his herd of 19 camels, Puzblay Seytpembetov and four companions pushed his small single-engine boat out onto the placid waters of the Aral Sea to lay fishnets. In the morning, he predicted, he would haul in flapping carp and pikeperch.

It is a daily task that until recently had seemed forever lost to the folly of humankind.

The Aral Sea, its sustaining rivers diverted to the irrigation of cotton fields, was for decades on an irrevocable course to death and desert. One of the 20th century's worst ecological disasters consumed more than half the sea's surface area and three-quarters of its volume, creating 13,000 square miles of dried-up wasteland. The shriveling sea bequeathed poisonous sandstorms, chronic health problems, dead fishing grounds and unemployment to this part of southern Kazakhstan.

But now the sea, or at least a rump part of it, is coming back, retracing its destructive retreat and offering villagers such as Seytpembetov nothing less than renewed life.

"It's good to be back on the water. I'm happy for that," said the weather-beaten fisherman, who turned to camel herding when the shoreline withdrew. "I'm happy for that. But it's not the sea it used to be. That's the truth."

Read more...

Papua New Guinea is Talking About...Surfing

A "Last, Lost World"

Will surfing bring visitors to one of the "least-touristed countries on Earth"?

By Evan Osnos, Chicago Tribune

Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea - Guarded by an iron fence, the Surfing Association of Papua New Guinea occupies the ground floor of Andy Abel's house.

Outside, shirtless children romp on streets without cars. Barefoot men hover around women sitting on the ground selling betel nut, the green seed that is Asia's answer to chewing tobacco and stains teeth the color of oxblood. It's a typical afternoon in this South Pacific capital.

Inside, Abel has the big couches and heavy air conditioning of an American McMansion. In a country where most people live in huts, his house is audaciously out of step.

Abel, head of the Surfing Association and the scion of an influential family, is a brawny father in his late 30s with a shiny shaved head. When he talks, he likes to pummel the surfer stereotype.

"Twenty years ago, people in Papua New Guinea called us surfer bums," he said. "But we are proving to our critics that, as surfers, we can build an industry that is sustainable and creating jobs."

Read more...

Tajikistan is Talking About...Smuggling

River is a Drug Smuggler's Dream

Tajik border a sieve for Afghan heroin; Russia pays the price

By Alex Rodriguez, Chicago Tribune

Panj,  Tajikistan -  The smugglers almost always come in the dead of night, in small bands clutching packages of Afghan heroin and Kalashnikov rifles. On tires lashed together or on makeshift wooden rafts, they cross the meandering Panj River that separates Afghanistan and Tajikistan, slip through minefields and navigate the tall reeds and footpaths on the Tajik side of the Panj.

Most of the time, they make it through unscathed.

From atop a guard tower overlooking the Panj, Tajik border guard Capt. Abdulkhamid Murodov explains why. An electrified fence rigged with alarms and installed as a line of defense is largely useless because Murodov's outpost doesn't have enough electricity to power it. His outpost also doesn't have enough two-way radios, lacks searchlights and too often doesn't have enough gas to get extra soldiers to the river's edge when firefights with smugglers break out.

Murodov points to a set of binoculars hanging on the tower's inside wall--it's the outpost's only set.

"Too many drug smugglers get across and just dissolve into our country. This happened even when the Russians were here," Murodov said, referring to a time when Russian troops helped patrol the Tajik-Afghan border.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime, or UNODC, says this year's harvest of opium in Afghanistan will reach a record 6,100 metric tons. As one of six nations bordering Afghanistan, tiny, mountainous Tajikistan is at the front line in the battle to keep that heroin from reaching the rest of the world.

It's a task that Tajikistan, the poorest of former Soviet republics and one of the world's poorest nations, shoulders despite being underequipped and outmanned for the job...Read more...

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Kathmandu is Talking About...Closing the Mountain

Comment: More about the effects of mass tourism. Weirdest fact in the article: 188 dead bodies are still up there.

Should Everest be closed?

Tourism is turning the world's highest peak into its biggest rubbish dump, claim conservationists, who are pressing for controls on climbing. But will this cost sherpas their livelihood?

By Dan McDougall, The Observer

Kathmandu, Nepal - It has been described as the highest junkyard in the world. Covered in discarded mountaineering detritus and suffering under thousands of tourists' boots every year, environmental groups are to launch a push for a radical solution - the temporary closure of Mount Everest, the world's highest mountain.

Warnings that an ecological disaster is imminent in the area around the mountain have largely been ignored amid years of turmoil in Nepal. But conservationists think that growing political stability in the Himalayan kingdom means that the time has come and that the damage caused every year by thousands of climbers and tourists can no longer be ignored.

Maoist rebels declared a ceasefire with Nepal's government in April after a decade-long insurgency and are negotiating to join an interim government with the country's mainstream political parties. The Kathmandu Environmental Education Project (Keep) said that the relative calm has removed an obstacle in its efforts to persuade the authorities that a temporary closure of the mountain is the only solution to help it repair itself.

Campaigners warn that the price of tourism is discarded rubbish and medical waste and the colonisation of the area by restaurants and internet cafes. Sherpa spelled out the strain being placed on the indigenous population. "Providing enough electricity and water for the small communities surrounding Everest and the other Himalayan mountains becomes very challenging when there are tens of thousands of additional tourists and climbers in the region competing for these same resources," he said. "Nepal is ravaged by water and air pollution caused by industrialisation and increased tourism. Water supplies for local villages, delivered through irrigation systems in the mountains, are being critically depleted and urgent action needs to be taken."

Read more...

Kabul is Talking About...Muppets

Muppets Teach Children a Land Mine Lesson

A British charity helps avert tragedy with a children's video on how to spot mines buried throughout Afghanistan.

By Rachel Morarjee, Christian Science Monitor

Kabul, Afghanistan  - "Bang!" The little puppet boy steps on a mine, and now he only has one leg. The Afghan children watching the video at a school on a Kabul hillside gasp.

Puppets have long been used to entertain and to teach children basic lessons such as how to count and the letters of the alphabet.

Now in Afghanistan the creators of Muppet stars Miss Piggy and Fozzy Bear have teamed up with two charities to teach children a lesson in survival: how not to get killed or maimed by the millions of land mines still buried in the Afghan soil.

"The Story of the Little Carpet Boy," loosely based on Pinocchio, is the brainchild of No Strings International, a British charity set up to reach children in war-torn areas and teach them vital life lessons through puppetry.

"It's hard to get a crowd of children to listen to an adult, but the minute you bring a puppet out, kids just light up," says Johnie McGlade, founder of No Strings.

Read more...

Tokyo is Talking About...Neighborhood Preservation

Now, something from my own backyard, as it were. No, I don't hang out here and I've only been there a couple of times -- I usually think of it as a transfer station between Shibuya and Kichijoji on the Keio Inokashira train line that I'm always passing through -- but I keep meaning to drop by some weekend and explore the streets and back-alleys to see what I can see.

For someone else's look at the neighborhood, check out "The cool sounds of 'Shimo'" by Steve McClure of the International Herald Tribune (February 4, 2004). Find out about Pizza of Death Records, and yes, the label's name does make perfect sense once you know the story.

Splitting a Hip Neighborhood, in More Ways Than One

"Until now, nobody cared if we destroyed the culture and environment of Tokyo," says urban planning professor. "People are gradually coming to understand that these things matter, too."

By Martin Fackler, New York Times

Tokyo, Setagaya Ward, Japan - With its vintage clothing stores, live music clubs and cheap noodle shops, Shimokitazawa is Tokyo’s answer to Greenwich Village, an epicenter of youth culture in one of Asia’s trendiest metropolises.

The neighborhood is popular for its cozy residential feel, drawing hordes of students and young office workers, who regularly throng its maze of narrow lanes and alleys.

Its tiny shops, many in converted houses or low-rise apartments, often bear names that recall a counterculture across the Pacific: the Village Vanguard Diner, Haight Ashbury, Mojo Rising.

But a shadow has fallen straight across the heart of this pulsing neighborhood. In four years, city officials plan to start building an 81-foot-wide thoroughfare that will slice Shimokitazawa in two.

The road has set off a rare battle for preservation in a country where big construction projects have long been welcomed as progress and used to grease the wheels of politics.

The fight pits boutique and bar owners, among them the first bearers of hippie culture to the neighborhood three decades ago, against city hall and older residents who resent the relative newcomers.

Read more...

See also:

• "The cool sounds of 'Shimo'" by Steve McClure of the International Herald Tribune (February 4, 2004)

Blagoveshchensk is Talking About...Chinese Immigration

Chinese Reap Opportunity, Rancor in Russia's Far East

Border-town life along the shared 2,264-mile (4,193-km) border

By Alex Rodriguez, Chicago Tribune

Blagoveshchensk, Amur Oblast, Russia - The imprint of China is everywhere in this Russian Far East city perched on the banks of the winding Amur River.

He Wenan's construction firm built 30 apartment buildings, three shopping centers and a hospital here. Wei Jing Qing is one of dozens of Chinese traders at the bustling Central Market who hawk everything from track suits to pipe fittings. Outside the city, Xiao Bin's produce farm fills Blagoveshchensk-bound trucks with cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplant, carrots and cabbage.

Just how this burgeoning node of Chinese enterprise should be received is the subject of fierce debate on the Asian side of Russia, a vast, resource-rich region where the population has been plunging for years.

For every Russian who argues that Chinese cash and labor are ably filling a void in a part of Russia that is withering, there's a Russian who believes nothing short of a Chinese takeover looms.

"There may come a day when China controls everything here," huffed Elena Prelovskaya, 46, who sells hats on the Russian side of Central Market. "They're buying out restaurants, buying apartments in our city and building shopping centers for themselves. And they're only hiring Chinese."

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Chennai is Talking About...Emerging Diseases

Modern Ways Open India’s Doors to Diabetes

Once the "rich man's burden," the disease is rapidly penetrating developing nations.

By N.R. Kleinfield, New York Times

Chennai (Madras), Tamil Nadu, India - There are many ways to understand diabetes in this choking city of automakers and software companies, where the disease seems as commonplace as saris. One way is through the story of P. Ganam, 50, a proper woman reduced to fake gold.

Her husband, K. Palayam, had diabetes do its corrosive job on him: ulcers bore into both feet and cost him a leg. To pay for his care in a country where health insurance is rare, P. Ganam sold all her cherished jewelry — gold, as she saw it, swapped for life.

She was asked about the necklaces and bracelets she was now wearing.

They were, as it happened, worthless impostors.

“Diabetes,” she said, “has the gold.”

And now, Ms. Ganam, the scaffolding of her hard-won middle-class existence already undone, has diabetes too." In its hushed but unrelenting manner, Type 2 diabetes is engulfing India, swallowing up the legs and jewels of those comfortable enough to put on weight in a country better known for famine. Here, juxtaposed alongside the stick-thin poverty, the malaria and the AIDS, the number of diabetics now totals around 35 million, and counting.

The future looks only more ominous as India hurtles into the present, modernizing and urbanizing at blinding speed. Even more of its 1.1 billion people seem destined to become heavier and more vulnerable to Type 2 diabetes, a disease of high blood sugar brought on by obesity, inactivity and genes, often culminating in blindness, amputations and heart failure. In 20 years, projections are that there may be a staggering 75 million Indian diabetics. A taste for sweets, like those in this bakery, and the growing popularity of fried and processed foods are contributing to diabetes in India.

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