All around the city, on the main roads, there are signs like these indicating the state of the traffic ahead. Here there is a 20 minute delay at the next junction, but the sign system can show a variety of different information. This is a much more socially conscious than our TrafficMaster system which provides information only to paying customers.
Further along the road one of the reasons for the delay becomes clear – although there seems not to be a lot of traffic about. The great thing about the roadworks here is that everything lights up. The cones are all strung together and powered by a generator at one end, as are the little arrow signs to make sure people are in the right lane. The men working also light up – their jackets are both reflective and lit and they each have a light stick they wave at the traffic when they don’t have anything better to be doing. You can’t see it in this picture, but these works have layed down a bunch of boards over the works themselves, during busy times the road is (nearly) open as usual, during the less busy times they ramp up the works, cone off parts of the road and pull up the boards to get to the works themselves. I’m not sure if this is just something thats happening at this set of works because they’re on a busy road and taking a long time, or if its normal practice.
When the guidebooks say theres vending machines everywhere they aren’t joking – this colony is two blocks away from my flat and quite a landmark, its where I need to turn off the main road if I’m coming from Sendagaya station. There are then another three or four machines in the two blocks between this set and my flat. I’ve never encountered a machine that had run out of stock of anything or that rejected any of my money – they mostly take small notes as well as coins. And they sell all sorts of things, though I’ve not found the alleged school-girl-panty machines yet, or maybe I’ve not recognised them and one day I’ll accidentally get a pair when I was expecting a nice can of iced coffee. Mostly they’re drinks machines, but theres a lot of cigarette machines around too. And there are ‘shop’ units containing only machines.
Theres no escape from strange architectural art over here either – this is, I think, a water clock which chimes and does some interesting stuff on the hour.
I’m sure there should be some boundaries to miniturisation, but apparently there is a staircase in here somewhere…
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