I'd never come across a "scramble crossing", like the famous one in Shibuya shown above, until I saw one in Japan. It seems they are fairly widely used around the world and, when I found myself with too much time on my hands, I wondered whether the Ginza scramble crossing had been the first one introduced to Japan. The Japanese Wikipedia entry maintains, however, that the first one was opened in Kokai, Kumamoto City on March 5th, 1969 and it is still there today:
Nationwide, there are 300 such crossings in Japan. Apparently, there is an ongoing debate over the effectiveness of the scramble crossing. Some argue that the increasing motorization in the country and declining pedestrian populations, especially in rural areas, make them inefficient at controlling traffic flow and are a major cause of jams. Others argue that they are in fact best suited to low vehicle traffic environments while still others contend that they are best used on major thoroughfares because they completely separate pedestrian and vehicle flows and so reduce traffic accidents.
Another name for "scramble crossing" that come up on the net is a "Barnes Dance" which comes from Henry Barnes who popularized the idea although he denied having invented it. The first such crossings seem to have appeared in Vancouver and Kansas in the 1940s.
I'll go back to my trainspotting now but hope this information might be useful for anyone applying for a permanant visa.
