Japan's greatest Boondoggle - white elephants of Nippon

[Buraku]

Yeah there are loads of example around the world,
America's Shuttle a spacecraft that never went to the Moon unlike Apollo and killed many Americans as well a teacher and an Israeli astonaut,
Three Gorges Dam a super Chinese project which was going to bring electric power to Chinese but has caused environmental damage and moced Chinese from their homes
the British Millenium dome cost the Brits about 700 million bucks may finally become useful by the time the 2012 Summer Olympic Games come round.

So who are the big boondoggles of Japan ?
Here's my 10

1 Suimtomo Bank, crap Bank billions in Bad loans. Also add Mizuho or the UFJ Group

2 Sony's Battery Scandal

3 Kansai Airpot or Narita Airport - usless airport

4 Koizumi's mo' concrete public works projects, employ old people to wave flags on quiet roads, don't to squat about the postal reform issues, now that Abe is in this shit may finally be stopped ?

5 Mitsubishi's F2 meant to be an F16 copy but costs about the price of 7 Stealth Bombers

6 Kobe reclaimed land, artificial islands in the Port of Kobe suffered some subsidence as their soil collapsed during the Hanshin quake

7 Hokkaido Railway - not only do you see roads leading to nowhere and bridges connecting uninhabitable islands to other Japanese islands with nobody living on them, the J-government not only wasted huge sums of cash building record long tunnels and massive toll bridges which are so over-priced nobody travels on them. Not many people live in Hokkaido, so why build such an extensive rail network where nobody lives ? No wonder its in debt.

8 Mitsubishi Motors vehicle defect cover-up and scandals Income in the minus is -100 billion yen or add
Daihatsu : lost too much of the market to Ford or Toyota,

won't be long before the company is extinct

9 NTT Data Corp

10 Sakura bank, another stupid Yakuza bank which is raising Japan's internal debt with billions in bad loans. Or include Chuo Mitsui or Nippon credit bank and the Yasuda Trust

[Catoneinutica]

Good post!

11. The "Aqua Line" Bridge-Tunnel thing between Kisarazu and Kawasaki that no one uses because the toll is 3500 yen!

12. The 1964 Olympics, which caused Tokyo to embark on an insane elevated-highway-building binge, the results of which still haunt places like Nihonbashi today.

13. The virtually complete destruction of the wetlands habitat around Tokyo Bay via relentless concrete-pouring and land reclamation.

14. Pretty much any "Dai-San Sector" project.

15. The H2 rocket-submarine debacle

16. The Nagano Olympics. Tsutsumi Yoshiaki's gain was the taxpayers' loss. And any records of the bribes given to the IOC sleazebags? Uh, we had to burn them because we didn't have any storage space. Yeah, that's the ticket!

[Jack]

Good post!

Good post? he doesn't know his arse from his elbow. I think that was a stupid post.

So-called White Elephants are referred to government projects that end up being very costly and useless such as Montreal's Mirabel Airport (for those of you who don't know the government expropriated so much land from farmers and cost so much money the airport was shutdown 25 years later) or the Olympic Stadium (cost US$1.5 billion in 1976 dollars). How does Mitsubishi's problems ( a private company) become a white elephant.

[Tsuru]

I concur with Catone... I especially agree about KIX/NRT and the F2 fighter.

3bis. Kansai's second runway. Narita needs that extra (big) runway more than Kansai or Haneda combined.
Come to think of it, I hate Kansai. It was the first real offshore international airport in the world, and it shows. Its design sucks, its terminal sucks, the shops suck, the restaurants suck, the train connections to the rest of Japan suck, nearly everything about it just sucks. The only, really good things that Kansai offers are the flights away from it.

17. The Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge. Megalomaniac project conceived in the late 1980s to show the world Japan is no.1 when it comes to making bridges. One of the longest and most expensive bridges in the world so people from Kobe can go to Awaji island.

18. Kobe airport. Just what the hell were they thinking? Oh... we can't build our new Osaka Kokusai Kuuko off Kobe so we build it one hour's travel away from the city like they did in Tokyo... only to build Kobe airport there IN EXACTLY THE SAME PLACE where KIX was supposed to go 15 years later. Now the Kansai region has three separate, exciting single-runway airports in a 20km radius.

[Socratesabroad]

Good post? he doesn't know his arse from his elbow. I think that was a stupid post.

Precisely.

I know we shouldn't feed the trolls, but...

So-called White Elephants are referred to government projects that end up being very costly and useless ...

Exactly, which is why Buraku's talking out of his ass when it comes to the Shuttle (I'll leave disputing the Three Gorges Dam and British Millenium dome to others)

America's Shuttle a spacecraft that never went to the Moon unlike Apollo and killed many Americans as well a teacher and an Israeli astonaut

Kurt Hoover and Wallace T. Fowler
University of Texas at Austin & Texas Space Grant Consortium

The Space Shuttle is the most complicated vehicle ever constructed. Its complexity dwarfs any previous project ever attempted, including the Apollo project. The Apollo project possessed a very specific goal, to send men to the moon. The Space Shuttle program has a wide variety of goals, some of which conflict.
[snip]
The Space Shuttle was the first attempt to produce a truly reusable spacecraft. All previous spacecraft were designed to fly only a single mission.

And if we look at what the Shuttle was intended to do...

NASA's post-Apollo plans for the continued manned exploration of space rested on a three legged triad. The first leg was a reusable space transportation system, the Space Shuttle, which could transport men and cargo to low earth orbit (LEO) and then land back on Earth to prepare for another mission. The second leg was a manned orbiting space station which would be resupplied by the Shuttle and would serve as both a transfer point for activities further from Earth and as a scientific and manufacturing platform. The final leg was the exploration of Mars, which would start from the Space Station.

Seems like the Shuttle is anything but a white elephant.

[dimwit]

Have to agree with Jack on this. Most of Buraku's white elephants are either not Japanese, not specific or not white elephants by definition.

Kansai is the only hub airport servicing western Japan and as badly designed and corruptly built and run as it may be, it is well used. The major problem I find at Kansai is the lack of local connections hindering its ability to serve as a hub.

The Akashi Bridge as it was originally designed was supposted to been a train bridge like the Seto-Ohashi and as such would have served as a useful commercial link. Somewhere in the design process that role was forgetten. Of the Shikoku Bridge Authorities boondoggles the clear winner is the Shinanami Kaido - the bridge from nowhere to nowhere.

[maraboutslim]

Yeah, man, the Narita Airport is so totally useless.

[FG Lurker]

Yeah there are loads of example around the world,
America's Shuttle a spacecraft that never went to the Moon unlike Apollo and killed many Americans as well a teacher and an Israeli astonaut,

??? The shuttle was not designed to go to the moon... It may be a white elephant, but not for that reason. As for fatalities, have you never heard of Apollo 1? All space travel is high-risk at the current time. Your buddies the Chinese will blow up a few taikonauts soon enough, if they haven't already (and just not said anything about it).

3 Kansai Airpot or Narita Airport - usless airport

Did you ever fly internationally to/from Itami, the main airport of western Japan before KIX? KIX has many problems, including being too far from Osaka with that crazy bridge toll that I can't even use ETC on, but it is a massive improvement over what Itami used to be.

4 Koizumi's mo' concrete public works projects, employ old people to wave flags on quiet roads, don't to squat about the postal reform issues, now that Abe is in this shit may finally be stopped ?

The USA uses defense and space as economic stimulators. Japan uses public works projects. Would you sooner see Japan funnel all that money into defense instead? Bet that would make your Chinese and Korean friends really happy! I'm not saying that the current situation is acceptable -- it is not, and it needs to be changed. If you want to stop it altogether though you need to consider what the alternatives are.

Most of your other points were private company fuckups, not national white elephants.

As for Daihatsu.... Have you ever wondered why Toyota doesn't produce Kei cars even though this is such a large (and still growing) segment of the Japanese car market? Perhaps that would be because Toyota is the majority owner of Daihatsu. Not just the main shareholder, the majority owner.

[Kuang_Grade]

3bis. Kansai's second runway. Narita needs that extra (big) runway more than Kansai or Haneda combined.
Come to think of it, I hate Kansai. It was the first real offshore international airport in the world, and it shows. Its design sucks, its terminal sucks, the shops suck, the restaurants suck, the train connections to the rest of Japan suck, nearly everything about it just sucks. The only, really good things that Kansai offers are the flights away from it.

In the spring, I flew in and out of KIX for the first time and I thought it wasn't too bad...it is a little more vertically orientated that I'm used to a airports but I thought its overall layout was fine, if a bit sparse in areas...and I thought the access to the shops and restaurants was a bit better than NRT...although KIX being much less crowded with people than NRT might have something to do with that. But going outside of the building at KIX doesn't offer much for the eye to look at. But that said, I much rather get stuck at KIX for 6 hours than NRT...the arcade game selction is vastly superior at KIX...they even have some machines near the gates.

But isn't the second island they are working on at KIX is not just a second runway but another facility because the first island is sinking a fair bit faster than expected?...That they expect the current KIX facility to be possibly unusable in 30 years (instead of the planned 50) due to faster than expected sinking....I'm trying to remember where I heard this...

[FG Lurker]

Public Works Projects here can be really really fucked up, and the way these are decided upon needs to be changed.

The bridge in my avatar photo is a good example... That is the first leg of a two bridge system with a road going across an island that connects the bridges together. The total cost of the two bridges and the road is about 10,000,000,000yen. Yes, 10 billion yen or about 87 million US dollars. The kicker? This is being built for a population of less than 500 people. Ah yes, our taxes at work.

Even better... As with most rural areas, the population is declining. Within 50 years or so, probably 20-30, nearly no one will be living on that island any more.

Related to the KIX subject in my previous post... From where I took the bridge photo I can see the island where the fill for KIX came from. It's not visible in the bridge photo, but they basically demolished a large part of an island in the Seto Inland Sea and barged it away to use as fill for the airport.

[FG Lurker]

But isn't the second island they are working on at KIX is not just a second runway but another facility because the first island is sinking a fair bit faster than expected?...That they expect the current KIX facility to be possibly unusable in 30 years (instead of the planned 50) due to faster than expected sinking....I'm trying to remember where I heard this...

I thought I heard that the rate of sinkage has slowed considerably. Basically it sank a lot rather quickly and seems to have settled somewhat. That could be wrong of course...

[Buraku]

I concur with Catone... I especially agree about KIX/NRT and the F2 fighter.

3bis. Kansai's second runway. Narita needs that extra (big) runway more than Kansai or Haneda combined.
Come to think of it, I hate Kansai. It was the first real offshore international airport in the world, and it shows. Its design sucks, its terminal sucks, the shops suck, the restaurants suck, the train connections to the rest of Japan suck, nearly everything about it just sucks. The only, really good things that Kansai offers are the flights away from it.

17. The Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge. Megalomaniac project conceived in the late 1980s to show the world Japan is no.1 when it comes to making bridges. One of the longest and most expensive bridges in the world so people from Kobe can go to Awaji island.

18. Kobe airport. Just what the hell were they thinking? Oh... we can't build our new Osaka Kokusai Kuuko off Kobe so we build it one hour's travel away from the city like they did in Tokyo... only to build Kobe airport there IN EXACTLY THE SAME PLACE where KIX was supposed to go 15 years later. Now the Kansai region has three separate, exciting single-runway airports in a 20km radius.

19 Daiei Inc

20 Tepco power company

21 Resona Holdings

22 Rotting Japanese Theme park

Good post!

The "Aqua Line" Bridge-Tunnel thing between Kisarazu and Kawasaki that no one uses because the toll is 3500 yen!

Yeah you're right that's one of the worst bridges ever knocked up by Nippon, cost about 12 Billion dollars to begin with 東京湾アクアライン the project has been pushing Japan further into debt each year.

[Buraku]

[MrUltimateGaijin]

22 Rotting Japanese Theme park

where's that? looks like a cool place to wonder around.

anyone mentioned stadiums that were built for the worldcup?

[Mulboyne]

Buraku, your contributions here are a good example of where, for me at least, your criticisms of Japan go boss-eyed. The thread topic is an interesting one and worth bringing up. Japan has many cases where public money has been spent to no good effect because there has been no accountability. You mention some nice examples because you know Japan well but you also throw in criminal activities and private company blunders. These are not "white elephants" but, even accepting your wider definition, you have to allow that there is a difference between an investment which seemed like a good idea but subsequently failed and one which was dead in the water to begin with. Also, making a loss is not the same as going bankrupt: an income statement is not a balance sheet. Should a country never have loss-making services?

Whether or not you believe the private sector allocates resources better than the public sector, either way, you must expect mistakes and some will be horrendous. Bridges have been built where the better course was not to bother. Narita was built but you can't say that it would have been better not to have an international airport. The difference is in execution rather than the concept. If you make no such distinctions, you can't see where the problems lie. Without that analysis, there is nothing useful to say.

There are also intangible considerations. It's very unlikely that all the money spent on the Tokyo Olympics was properly or even legally allocated but it got the job done and the boost to the nation's self esteem played an important role in the postwar transition. The spending on stadiums for the World Cup has had nothing like that effect to date. You don't like Tokyo Tower and I don't care for it but some national achievement was probably called for at the time. Cost-benefit analysis is a slippery concept not least because you are never sure how far to look ahead.

If you prefer to decide that anything is fair game then the only question you really need to answer in this thread is whether Japan is right to buy US Treasuries or not.

[dimwit]

Indeed. I was thinking about responding to this earlier but thought fuck it, as Blackie seems to be intent on sabotaging his own thread.

My guess is that when looking up some article, probably about Kansai Airport, he came across the term 'white elephant' which he promptly looked up in Google or Wikipedia. Not really understanding the definition he applied the term to everything he doesn't like about Japan. While there are boondoggles aplenty in Japan, NONE of the examples he has given fit the bill.

The Shimanami Kaido is IMHO the biggest white elephant of them all. One of the three bridges proposed during the reign of Masyoshi Ohira who happened to be the local member of the diet from Kagawa and build for political purposes -Kagawa was going to get the Seto Ohashi and Tokushima the Naruto Bridge so Ehime had to have a bridge.

The bridge might of made some sense if it had connected Hiroshima and Matsuyama, but that would have been too expensive even by spendthrift standards of the bubble. So they compromised and build a bridge which connects Imabari (a smallish city which ironically is the ship building capital of Shikoku) and Whatdoyamacallit (a smallish city on the other side). Just kidding. The town on the other side is Onomichi which is famous for -the Shimanami Kaido.

Economically, the bridge is largely unused (not underused) as travelling between Honshu and Matsuyama is still quicker by ferry or by using one of the other two bridges.

The effect of the bridge on the local economy of Imabari has been devastating. Since the Shimanami bridges sucked up so much work, after their completion the jobs evaporated leaving the area a hallow shell.

Incidently, I saw an interesting pictorial essay in one of the weeklies about some of the 'hallow boxes' in Abe's home constituiency in Yamaguchi While undoubtedly many of them were built during the time of his father, there were some beauties.

[Catoneinutica]

<snip> You don't like Tokyo Tower and I don't care for it but some national achievement was probably called for at the time.<snip>

Alas, the mind reels at how many national/prefectural "achievements" were "called for" in 80s/90s Japan. The countryside is littered with would-be Tokyo Towers, many of which are now abandoned because maintenance is too expensive.

One might fault Buraku's use of the term "White Elephant"; perhaps a better, albeit more cumbersome, appelation might be: Examples of Projects in Which Varying Degrees of Corporate/Bureaucratic Hubris/Incompetence Played a Role, and Left the J-Taxpayer Holding the Bag.

[Buraku]

where's that? looks like a cool place to wonder around.

There are loads of rotting theme parks in Japan, I can't remember any names yet but they were all built during the bubble years when Japan's stocks at 38,000 were greater than all the stock markets of the world combined ( DowJones, DAC, HangSeng, CAC, FTSE...) and the Japanese had loads of money to spash around.

Buraku, your contributions here are a good example of where, for me at least, your criticisms of Japan go boss-eyed. The thread topic is an interesting one and worth bringing up.

Ok I take your point, it's a good one. I'll try to stick by a better definition of bondoogle projects. I'm sure we could reach 100 even if the thread becomes more strictly suited to the true white-elephant definition.
The Japanese are a very smart people who re-built themselves after WW2, they changed their country from an imperial fuedal one into a prosperous and free nation after the war - so why can't they sort out the whole bad loan mess that came out of the economic bubble of the 80s and 90s ? I think a whole part of getting Japan back on the path to full and sustainable economic growth is to get rid of these corrupt white elephant projects.


42 Japan's world cup was fantastic but they kept building and building, look at what we got today - soccer stadiums with no football teams (costing the nation money)

43 bullet trains of Nagasaki, waste of cash, technical glitches may cause the project to fail some say it was an election stunt to win Votes

44 Rivers in Japan, all streams or rivers in Japan except 12 are dammed and have concrete riverbanks, this has often caused huge enviornmental damage

45 2nd Tomei mo' concrete road which was built for connecting hicks in Kanagawa to Aichi, not needed - another of the LDP's public works stunt.

46 Idea to tunnel to Sakhalin or the Bridge to Korea which would connect Asia/Siberia with mainland Japan, since the Koreans and Japanese never see eye to eye and Putin tries to reach a new bag limit on J-fishermen there is not even an official peace treaty between the two countries, these project can be safely considered expensive White elephants

47 Shinkansen of Hokuriku, might cost double or tripple the normal price of a shinkansen ( 2-4 trillion yen) and after all the cash pumped into it, this train may not even work

48 Ken-O Expressway a very much needed highway for one of the world's largest cities, but its price is astronomical and its going to cost something like 5-10 Trillion. If the price is right it sounds like it may become another expensive toll road that nobody will use

49 Expensive art galleries no one visits

50 Tokaimura and their regular Nuke Spills, they got fined $8,000 for the ugly Tokai Nuclear Accident, JCO workers killed. Hundreds of residents exposed to nuclear radiation - Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute lets lets pay up that little fine ! and goes Party Time ! Excellent !
Operators almost caused the JAPANESE CHERNOBYL !!

51 Project to grey-out all Japan's coastlines concrete walls everywhere and you also get that nasty pollution, lots of gomi on the beaches

[Catoneinutica]

About Buraku's #50, Expensive museums that no one visits: these behemoths are all over the place in the boonies. Perhaps they reperesented the "build-it-and-they-will-come" spirit mentioned by Mulboyne. Instead, they've become unintentional monuments to Dadaism: big, expensive buildings that often have to resort to displaying posters because they have no acquistions budget.

[Charles]

About Buraku's #50, Expensive museums that no one visits: these behemoths are all over the place in the boonies. Perhaps they reperesented the "build-it-and-they-will-come" spirit mentioned by Mulboyne. Instead, they've become unintentional monuments to Dadaism: big, expensive buildings that often have to resort to displaying posters because they have no acquistions budget.

I previously described this phenomenon in detail in another thread.

As a brief followup to this article, art market prices are now going back up, with several major paintings selling around $140 million, far in excess of even the most insane prices paid by Japanese "collectors" during the bubble years. So many of those bubble-purchase paintings that have been sitting in vaults for years are now, for the first time, worth more than their purchase price. We've seen a couple of Japanese corporate art collections go up for sale recently, but the big bubble purchases are likely to be sold at major auction houses by anonymous sellers. So the only thing that could have saved these white-elephant museums, the law I described in that article, intended to give collectors an incentive to loan their works to the museums, is now pointless (not that it worked as intended in the first place). Major works, hidden away for years, will either continue to languish in vaults as appreciating investments, or be resold on international markets.

[Catoneinutica]

I previously described this phenomenon in detail in another thread.

As a brief followup to this article, art market prices are now going back up, with several major paintings selling around $140 million, far in excess of even the most insane prices paid by Japanese "collectors" during the bubble years. So many of those bubble-purchase paintings that have been sitting in vaults for years are now, for the first time, worth more than their purchase price. We've seen a couple of Japanese corporate art collections go up for sale recently, but the big bubble purchases are likely to be sold at major auction houses by anonymous sellers. So the only thing that could have saved these white-elephant museums, the law I described in that article, intended to give collectors an incentive to loan their works to the museums, is now pointless (not that it worked as intended in the first place). Major works, hidden away for years, will either continue to languish in vaults as appreciating investments, or be resold on international markets.

Thanks for the update. Compare any of Japan's "museums" with the biggies in the West such as the Guggenheim, the Getty, the Metropolitan, the Prado, the National Gallery (London and DC), the British Museum, the Louvre - all have low (or free) admission charges and huge endowments (insert GBoothe joke here) and acquistion budgets.

As dingosatemybaby ever-so-astutely noted in that other thread you reference, infrastructure in Japan seems to invariably include massive concrete pouring. The attitude of the colluding bureaucrats/corporations seems to be, pour enough concrete, and you'll give an obscure local area a raison d'etre. Then, step aside as the tourists come flooding in, buying gazillions of yen worth of local omiyage!

[Behan]

50 Tokaimura and their regular Nuke Spills, they got fined $8,000 for the ugly Tokai Nuclear Accident, JCO workers killed. Hundreds of residents exposed to nuclear radiation - Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute lets lets pay up that little fine ! and goes Party Time ! Excellent !
Operators almost caused the JAPANESE CHERNOBYL !!

I had to take my son up to Hitachi for a club he belonged to and we passed through Tokaimura. He needed to stop for the toilet so we used a 7-11 right in front of a gate of one of those nuclear facilities there. It was a few years after the accident but I was still a bit nervous. I feel sorry for the local people, and of course for the workers who died in the accident.
I think that the workers put nuclear material into a mop bucket or something , so they could speed up the process.
Only a $8,000 fine? That's ridiculous.

[Charles]

Operators almost caused the JAPANESE CHERNOBYL !!

Your understanding of nuclear technology is very weak.

BTW, there are plenty of onsen in Japan that offer bathing in water that is naturally full of uranium salts. I've been to one myself. There is considerable research that indicates that low levels of radiation is good for you. Don't believe me? Go look up "radiation hormesis." Also note that everything in the universe is slightly radioactive, naturally occurring radioactive isotopes are part of all physical matter. Right now, radioactive cosmic rays from deep space are raining down on you.

[Buraku]

Your understanding of nuclear technology is very weak.

What the fuck ? Do you work for KABOOM or something ?? The Key Atomic Benefits Office of Mankind ?

You're confusing ENRICHED Uranium with Natural uranium - the nature stuff doesn't do much harm because it begins with such a low percentage of U-235, for example Little Boy had 235 isotopes - ie UNNATURAL !! Cosmic radiation is rather mild on Earth because our Planet and its atmosphere and field protect us from the nasty stuff from outer space, so unless you happen to be Buzz Aldrin sitting on a Solar Flare or Buck Rodgers taking a trip to the nearest Pulsar...cosmic radiation ain't gonna kill anyone soon.

[Tsuru]

What the fuck ? Do you work for KABOOM or something ?? The Key Atomic Benefits Office of Mankind ?

You're confusing ENRICHED Uranium with Natural uranium - the nature stuff doesn't do much harm because it begins with such a low percentage of U-235, for example Little Boy had 235 isotopes - ie UNNATURAL !! Cosmic radiation is rather mild on Earth because our Planet and its atmosphere and field protect us from the nasty stuff from outer space, so unless you happen to be Buzz Aldrin sitting on a Solar Flare or Buck Rodgers taking a trip to the nearest Pulsar...cosmic radiation ain't gonna kill anyone soon.

There are known natural nuclear reactors in the ground in Africa that surely contain some amount of U-235. The whole point of an element becoming radioactive is a change in the isotope's core that causes an emission of nuclear particles and gradual desintegration of the unstable element, measured in halflife time. The emissions from the isotope are the actual radiation. As Charles says, low levels of irradiation can be healthy as they kill cancerous cells in the body much like they do with machines in the hospital, while high levels of radiation can be an actual cause of cancer.
"Enriched" uranium is just the uranium mix of 238, 237, 236 and 235 distilled to contain x% of U-235, as that is the most radioactive isotope and therefor the most useful for the production of nuclear weapons because it has the smallest critical mass.

Anyone who travels on an airliner is exposed to increased levels of cosmic radiation and some of the people who do it daily (pilots, cabin crew) suffer from decreased fertility as a result of this.

[Buraku]

[Tsuru]

About 53: Forget about it, it will never happen. SSBJ's are the way to go when it comes to executive transport for the next 50 years, and when it comes to that the French (and the Americans, and the Russians as well) already have a project of their own.

Sorry nippon... shou ga nai.

[Charles]

69
Fukushima nuclear power plant good at killing Japanese workers

I think you meant to say "Fukushima nuclear power plant workers good at killing themselves, bad at following instructions and safety rules."

[Catoneinutica]

Re: 61 - Gunma in general has got to be the Koncrete Kapital of Japan. Jiminy Cricket, I've never seen so much of the goddamn stuff - entire hillsides sliced away and concreted over. Obuchi Yuko ("This is my dad's watch - tee hee") must have quite the pork-barrel pull.

[Buraku]

72
Tokyo-Aeropolis-2001 plan to build a super high-rise space elevator building over Tokyo Bay, Japanese desire to make previous structures like KVLY-TV mast, WTC, Sears Tower, Petronas Towers, the DPRK's dead Ryugyong Hotel and Warsaw mast look tiny in front of Japan's Mo' Concrete solutions. Only trouble is Aeropolis2001 will be built on one of the world's worst Earthquake zones.

73
Original Astro-E space telescope, failure to launch in Y2K with the Japanese satellite now exploring the bottom of the Pacific ocean

74
Sky City 1000 , another future mo' concrete project with possible LDP backing and rumors of nine-fingered Yak connections, a Japan plan to grey all the Japanese skylines and stick 140,000 workers and residents into Tokyo's clouds, project is now aptly named sky-shitty.