For the second installment of You'll Never Ride It, we have the Tokyo G-CANS project, an immense network of tunnels "for preventing overflow of the major rivers and waterways spidering the city." The tunnels were blogged to death a couple years ago, but never mentioned with reference to bmx or skateboarding, so I'll go ahead and throw up the standard set of rehashed images.
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My dad was talking about Dogs and Demons (I haven't read it (yet)). The book basically predicts Japan's economic and environmental collapse, due to an obsession with exactly this kind of ridiculous public works project. Terrible, but I just can't help getting a little teary-eyed when I think of all the amazing concrete wonders, never to be glimpsed by a skater or bike rider.
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Land Rover used the location to shoot a tv commercial, which is a cool idea but pretty weakly executed. The YouTube:
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Here's another quick G-Cans movie. Video helps give context to all the familiar images; and the audio really completes a sense of atmosphere.
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Tours available in Japanese: "Feel the grandeur of the Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Tunnel."
Feel the grandeur!
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And, while you and I will never bike the tunnels, some people (admittedly) do. Heck of a commute.
