Month: June 2007

Categories
Kirainet

6 months writing in English

It’s been six months since I started translating posts from my Spanish blog into English. Good things are: I improved my English and started to know the English blog community in Japan, that means meeting new people and making new friends. Bad things: it is very boring to translate something you have already written.

This English version had 255.209 pageviews in six months, not bad, but ridiculous compared with the Spanish version that has now more than 11 millions pvs. I translated 133 posts, the most commented post is this one, you guys made 498 comments, that’s more than two comments per day. The visitors who made more comments were: Sheerblade, Jamaipanese and Brad.

Thanks a lot to all the people who made comments or participated in this blog’s conversation from their own blogs.

Categories
Trains

Yurikamome

Yurikamome line is one of my favorite railways in Japan. Is one of the main connections between Tokyo and Odaiba island. Is not really a train, neither a monorail… it works somehow using wheels and traveling on top of an elevated concrete structure. It doesn’t need a driver, everything is controlled by computers. Not having a driver means that you can sit down in the first wagon and enjoy incredible views as if you were controlling the train. I really enjoy Yurikamome line, I feel like I’m in Gotham or New Port


Views from the first wagon.

If you want to give it a try, go to Shinbashi station using Yamanote line and then change to Yurikamome line until Odaiba.

Categories
Architecture

Tokyo pyramid

This weekend I watched a Discovery Channel(from youtube) documentary about a huge pyramid that could be built in Tokyo. The pyramid would have the same volume as 55 Gizeh pyramids, and 750.000 people could live inside the structure. It’s an idea from Shimizu corporation that could solve some of the overpopulation we are suffering at Tokyo. It’s an utopia, but still I enjoy imagining the future.

In the first video you can see images from nowadays Tokyo and the place where the pyramid could be placed. Just next next to Odaiba.

In the second part they explain is more in detail some problems that occur when building pyramidal shaped buildings and how those problems could be solved using nanotubes.

Next video shows how robots could play a central role when building such a huge structure. It also introduces as in auto-constructing technologies, buildings that build themselves.

Fourth part finishes explaining self-constructing buildings and continues with transport systems inside the pyramid.They show real images from Yurikamome line, a train that is working without a human driver since some years ago in Tokyo.

While watching the last part we learn how the energy problem could be solved and how the pyramid would be safe against earthquakes and tsunamis.

CaRPe DieM sent me the videos, thx!