Boing Boing » Tokyo

Tokyo's underground bike-storage robots

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 16:00:32 +0000

Culture Japan Network TV shows us the underground bicycle-parking robots of Shinagawa, Tokyo. These machines ingest RFID-tagged bicycles and whisk them into their bowels and set them lovingly into huge subterranean crypts, from which they are robotically disinterred when their owners are ready to ride. Each machine holds 200 bikes. The manufacturer's representative explains that storing bikes underground protects them from "pranks" and frees up surface area for better applications, but inexplicably the area around the robo-ingesters is a blank field of paving bricks of approximately the same area that the bikes would occupy on the surface.

Underground Bicycle Parking Systems in Japan (via Kadrey)

Just look at this banana vending machine in Shibuya, Tokyo.

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 21:14:56 +0000

Just look at it.

Shibuya Banana Vending Machine (Thanks, Brent!)

Must-listen radio: "Nuclear Power After Fukushima," documentary from BURN: An Energy Journal

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 20:47:01 +0000

Veteran radio journalist and master storyteller Alex Chadwick (who's also a personal friend—he's taught me so much about journalism over the years) hosts a must-listen radio documentary premiering this weekend on public radio stations throughout the US.

BURN: An Energy Journal is a four-hour, four-part broadcast and digital documentary series exploring "the most pressing energy issues of our times."

Part One of the series, titled "Particles: Nuclear Power After Fukushima," coincides with March 11, the first anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. I've listened in entirety, and followed along as the BURN team researched and produced over the past few months, and I can tell you this is truly powerful work. The show also includes PBS Newshour reporter Miles O'Brien, reporting from inside the Fukushima exclusion zone on his recent trip there.

Carve out some time and listen to it on-air, or listen online at this link.

Snip from description:

Included in the riveting premiere episode is an exclusive, first-time-ever interview with an American who was on-site at the Daiichi nuclear plant when the earthquake and tsunami struck. Carl Pillitteri, a maintenance supervisor and one of 40 Americans in Fukushima on that fateful day, describes his terrifying ordeal as he desperately attempted to lead his men to safety through the enormous, shuddering turbine buildings in total darkness.

Below, a video excerpt from Alex's interview with Pillitteri.

More about the radio series follows.

For BURN: An Energy Journal, Chadwick, a beloved public radio correspondent with 30 years of broadcast experience whose storytelling abilities and integrity have been compared to Charles Kuralt's, finds intimate, human-scale stories to explain and explore the very serious energy challenges that face communities across this country and around the world. He interviews an intriguing array of scientists and engineers, policy makers and citizen activists, research visionaries and maverick inventors, concerned parents and committed young people. These personal stories illuminate how and why we face an energy crisis, the dilemma of the continuing demand for energy, the realities and consequences of a mostly carbon-based industry and infrastructure, and some possible alternatives to what looks increasingly to be an ever-more-challenging energy and climate future in the coming decades.
(...) In Part One, "Particles: Nuclear Power After Fukushima," which is airing on the first anniversary of the disaster this coming Sunday, March 11, Chadwick examines the future of nuclear power after the disaster and asks the essential question: "What have we learned from Japan . . . and now what?" In addition to the Carl Pillitteri story and others, the host presents recordings of telephone and other conversations from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Emergency Operations Center in the early days of the disaster, released at the request of BURN. Chadwick also profiles Greg Hardy, a Los Angeles-based engineer who has spent much of his career examining the vulnerability of nuclear plants to earthquakes. Hardy says he's comfortable living between two nuclear facilities along California's coast, even after Fukushima. But Hardy's wife is skeptical. The show travels to Japan, where PBS Newshour reporter Miles O'Brien reports from inside the exclusion zone. The series also visits Germany, where the government plans to shut down its nuclear reactors by 2022.
BURN: An Energy Journal's three other one-hour specials include:
Hunting for Oil | Risks and Rewards - An Earth Day special that coincides with the two-year anniversary of the April 20 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the worst in U.S. History. What became of all that oil? And what's the future of offshore drilling? What are our options?
Energy Efficiency | Taking It to the Streets - A one-hour special for the Fall, 2012, dedicated to the promise of energy efficiency. Energy Secretary Steven Chu says "Energy efficiency isn't just low hanging fruit; it's fruit laying on the ground." Beyond petroleum, coal, nuclear and alternative energy, many believe efficiency is the "fifth fuel, "a huge, untapped resource.
An Energized Presidency - The culminating hour of BURN will be an Election Special for broadcast in October, 2012. Should we have a comprehensive national energy policy rather than a patchwork of laws and regulations? BURN will explore our energy policies and how they are being defined by the political parties and 2012 presidential candidates.
BURN: An Energy Journal is produced by SoundVision Productions in partnership with APM's Marketplace and The Story, PBS NewsHour, and with a grant from the National Science Foundation. The BURN radio specials are distributed by American Public Media. Part one of the series airs on 250 stations throughout the US.

Foreign journalist claims corruption, brutality, death threats from Japanese airport officials

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 20:16:06 +0000

Christopher Johnson, a Canadian journalist residing (until recently) in Japan published a ghastly account of his return to Tokyo after a short pre-Christmas trip. He was flagged at the border (he implies that this is related to his coverage of Fukushima), held, threatened, and shaken down for bribes before being detained without counsel or a phone call. He says he was eventually deported, though not before being ordered to sign a falsified confession and being threatened by an official at gunpoint, who demanded that he purchase a hyper-inflated plane ticket, which, Johnson believes, included a kickback for the official.

This time, he came back with a young, stocky guy. He was wearing a blue uniform. “Do you see this gun?” he said in Japanese, turning around to show me a weapon in its holster. “I have the legal authority to use this if you refuse to get on that flight. Now are you going to buy that ticket?”
I was angry now. They are forcing me at gunpoint to buy an overpriced ticket.
The [guards] ushered me out of the room and through the airport. They still had my bag, my passport, my wallet, credit cards, everything. I had no choice. They whisked me through the airport like a criminal. I didn’t have to line-up for x-ray machines or immigration. [They] pushed me through VIP lines, ahead of pilots and flight attendants.

Japan's outsourced airport detentions operation is the subject of its own Amnesty International report.

Gulag for gaijin (Thanks, arbitraryaardvark!)

(Image: Immigration, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from bryansblog's photostream)

Android Dreams: Time-lapse Tokyo Homage to Blade Runner

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 14:07:04 +0000

[Video Link]. Boing Boing reader Samuel Cockedey created this lovely short, and explains:

This is a tribute to Ridley Scott and Vangelis, whose work on Blade Runner has been a huge source of inspiration in my shooting time lapses. Please watch in HD with sound on! Shot over a year in Tokyo with a Canon 5dmk2, mainly in the Shinjuku area. Music: "Main Titles" and "Blush Response" from the Blade Runner soundtrack. More information on the process here. Selected sequences available for licensing here.

Interview: Yoko Ono

Xeni Jardin — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 17:50:40 +0000

Boing Boing special feature Interview: Yoko Ono By Xeni Jardin

Artist and peace activist Yoko Ono (78), wife of the late John Lennon, was recently honored with the 8th Hiroshima Art Prize. The award honors artists whose work has contributed to peace. To commemorate this, The Hiroshima Museum of Contemporary Art is hosting "The Road of Hope: Yoko Ono 2011," an exhibit honoring the “spirit of Hiroshima that yearns for permanent world peace and prosperity for all humanity."

The show is on display through October 16, 2011. It features new works by Yoko Ono inspired by the survival of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and by the disasters that struck Japan in March, 2011, "with hope for the future."

I spoke to Yoko Ono in Japan a few days after she received the Hiroshima prize. She was in Tokyo to speak about "The Road of Hope" at the MORI art museum.

Yoko Ono at the MORI museum last week

Xeni Jardin, Boing Boing: A few days ago, you were in Hiroshima accepting an award for your your legacy of art in the service of peace. You were a young girl here in Japan when the event happened. What was that day like?

Yoko Ono: Yes, I think I was 12. It was a shock of course, but at the time, initially we didn’t know what happened. I heard about it from somebody in the village. It’s a very, very different kind of bomb, they said, we have to immediately stop the war. It didn't make sense to me at all, in any way. We didn't understand.

XJ: At what point did the magnitude or the nature of what had happened become more clear to you?

YO: Well, every day, from then on. They were reporting in newspapers and magazines what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and it was just -- it was something that you just could not understand. It was just so bad.

XJ: Trying to grasp the full scope of what had happened must have been something that unfolded over many years for you, your family, and for all of your fellow countrymen and women.

YO: Well you see, it was because of Pearl Harbor, and so the rest of the world was very, very cold to us when the bombs dropped. Like, “Oh, they deserved it.” That kind of thinking.

And of course in those days, the idea of what an enemy is, and what is fair to do to enemies were very different. For America to have bombed civilians was something that most people accepted. But women and children, old and young, they all suffered. If it had happened not to Japan but in a Western country, maybe the West would have felt differently about it. But that’s how it was. And the Japanese people, especially the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they had to endure the whole thing without any kindness or compassion from the world. Despite the meanness directed at them, even after the bombing, they stood up and survived, and they created a normal situation out of the ashes of that horror, which I believe is amazing.

The whole of Japan helped them. I learned when I was in Hiroshima, for instance, that many trees were sent from other towns throughout Japan, to be planted there to renew the bare ground. People throughout the country tried to help, but Hiroshima and Nagasaki had to stand up on their own, as well, of course.

And in a very strange way, even though they were victims and martyrs of a terrible thing, now they are not victims. They are the people who created a strong, strong recovery. They show to the world that this is what we can do, instead of all the myths that were created about those places — the myth that you could never enter those places after what happened, and that you couldn’t return into those cities. Just walking in there is dangerous.

But now, they’re two beautiful cities again. And the world sees that.

XJ: The fact that they were able to survive and to create a place that was habitable is amazing.

YO: Yes, but the point is that means that it takes the rest of the world, too, because what happened there did not just happen to Hiroshima or Nagasaki or to Japan, but to the entire world. This was a world event, and we all suffered from it, and we must all learn from it.

XJ: Your return to Hiroshima this week was connected with your artwork over the past decades, and your work for peace. I wonder if you could speak a little bit about your thoughts about the connection between art and survival, about human creativity as a tool that helps individuals and communities prevail over suffering. This is a theme I’ve seen a lot in your work.

YO: Creativity is part of the growth of human beings, just like creativity is part of the growth of nature. And whenever something stops your growth, that’s when you really have to fight. It’s very important that we keep creating things.

Why? To show the process of activity, to show that we’re still alive. To create is to express life.

Yoko Ono delivers a lecture at the MORI Art Museum in Tokyo

XJ: Just this year, Japan experienced another tremendous disaster and the scope of this disaster, the earthquake, the tsunami, and now the Fukushima nuclear crisis, the scope of which we’re still learning.

YO: It is a disaster, and it is ongoing, and we still do not truly know the scope. Many people ask me, “What do you think we should do about the nuclear crisis?” I'm saying, “I'm just as ignorant as you are about it.” This is something where we have to just see what happens. But while we are seeing what happens, we can keep on creating a healthy life as much as we can. And we must.

XJ: You said earlier that people thought Hiroshima and Nagasaki would become permanent, uninhabitable dead zones. With the current crisis here in Japan, I’ve heard people in Tokyo talk about people from towns near the exclusion zone being shunned as if they have a contagious disease, as if you could "catch" cesium contamination; people are talking about that entire zone just being sort of locked off forever. The families, even the children who are from there are in some cases being treated as if they were lepers. It’s as if that very sad part of history is repeating itself.

YO: Yeah, exactly.

See, the thing is — that’s where I’m seeing the road of hope, because leprosy was something — it was considered as something that was like the dead end. All the lepers were sent to an island and they were supposed to be there until they died or something. And AIDS, in the beginning it was believed that all people who had AIDS should be shunned and feared, and would die similarly.

All that is not true now, because there was a sudden change in understanding that was created by scientists. But we just have to allow a certain space in emotion or understanding, we have to know that anything could happen, in either direction: the whole world after this disaster could all die together, this situation might leak to all the other countries as well.

Or, we’re just suddenly going to find something. And even the people who are contaminated and we’re thinking, “Oh they are lepers” or something, they are going to be well or they’re going to be better than us.

I went to Hiroshima and I saw this tree that was directly under the bomb. And this tree survived, and it looks even better than some of the other trees. You can never know what will happen with that incredible release of energy. It can kill, but it might be an energy that’s going to bring some incredible, incredible growth. Those are things that we don’t know. Now we’re being extremely emotional and fearful in our judgment, and that’s okay. It’s understandable. But it’s much better to keep a little space there for some kind of totally unexpected situation to happen in a good way.

And by being so emotional and so angry and so determined that nothing good is going to happen, we may not let it happen.

Some people say that I'm very optimistic. I'm not optimistic. I'm just practical. If you want to give up, then go ahead: give up. But I'm not about to give up.

And there are many people like me, who don’t want to give up life. And so all of us should just — the ones who don’t really want to give up life, we have to walk this road of hope together.

That’s what I think. And we’re doing it. We’re doing it together.

• Yoko Ono today published an editorial concerning Hiroshima Day at Imagine Peace.

More at Boing Boing

• Yoko Ono Embraces Creative Commons? O Yes!

• Essay collection to benefit Japan quake: Gibson and Ono

• June 1, 1969: “Give Peace a Chance”