Umbrella massacre in Tokyo

My friend John Alderman snapped this photo of an umbrella burial ground just outside of Tokyo's Ikebukero train station. After a huge storm, the wind deposited the mangled mass of cheap umbrellas into a pile. Link

• [spokehedz]

  Umbrellas could so use a nice infusion of carbon-fiber. Imagine an umbrella that was 1/3 of the weight of a normal umbrella–and would lift you off the ground before it would flip inside out.

  Now that’s an umbrella I would spend $200 on.

• [Antinous]

  My umbrella is strong enough to lift me. I don’t know what the ribs are made of, but it would take an F5 tornado to invert them.

• [M]

  A common sight that is also not surprising, since these umbrellas are mostly cheap, but quite often freely distributed…

• [paul m doherty]

  The Japanese find a lot of uses for broken umbrellas, one being development of cat villages.

  http://picasaweb.google.com/paulmichaeldoherty/Tokyo2008/photo#5187378328368984578

• [ekricyote]

  And I was hoping for zombies to be mentioned somewhere in this…

• [Takuan]

  I wonder if these can take the wind
  http://www.real-self-defense.com/umbrella.html

• [Antinous]

  Now that’s ninjutsu.

• [darrell]

  If you think this is bad I once witnessed a mountain of rusting bicycles on the streets of Hiroshima. If I can find the pic in my cell phone I’ll upload it.

• [Caaaaaam]

  This pile was also probably from the same windstorm:

  http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3294/2439286550_f9ed7cd20e.jpg?v=0

• [yooper1019]

  When I lived in Japan they had 100 Yen stores all over the place (equivalent to our dollar stores in the U.S.). Unless you knew it was going to rain most people didn’t carry one and would pop into a 100 Yen to buy one. EVERYBODY in Japan has an umbrella when its raining!

• [alisong76]

  #2 – Indeed – a good ‘brelly blows inside out in a gust of wind just as easily as a cheap one.

• [noen]

  Spontaneous gorilla art installation piece?

• [David Pescovitz]

  Ha! It really made me recognize how umbrellas have become a disposable product (not necessarily a good thing). It seems kinda silly to buy a “quality” umbrella because you’d probably accidentally leave it somehwere. But the cheap street vendor umbrellas break too easily.

• [Antinous]

  I’ve had my umbrella since 1980, thank you very much. It cost about $200 and will probably outlast human civilization.