Located just to the southeast of Tokyo's Haneda airport, in the middle of the ocean, is a rather interesting structure. Referred to as the “Tower of Wind” of “Kaze no to” in local language, it consist of a dazzling white circular base with two blue and white striped oval shaped structures, that look like two sails from the distance.
A surprisingly large number of blogs and online discussion boards believed the structure to be some secret government lair. The truth, however, is very mundane – it is just a ventilation shaft for the Tokyo Bay Aqualine – an undersea tunnel that lies approximately 40 meters below. Tokyo Bay Aqualine is the fourth-longest underwater, 9.6 kilometers long that runs from Yokohama to Chiba under the Tokyo Bay. The tunnel took 31 years to build, cost 11.2 billion dollars, and shaves some 100km off the round the Bay trip to Chiba.
The attractive monolith houses the tunnel’s intake and exhaust ventilation system and also marks the midway point of the undersea tunnel. Photo credit
They're "striped," not "stripped."
ReplyDeleteIt took 9 years of construction, not 31. There was over 20 years of planning though, which is probably a reflection of the bureaucratic nonsense that is Japanese officialdom.
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