JAPANESE SNAPSHOTS – #24 – SPIDERWEBS

My previous travel blogs about Japanese life have been complimentary, extolling the virtues of the Japanese culture and lifestyle.  So, I’m thinking it’s time to be a little critical.  It’s not all sunshine and roses in the Land of the Rising Sun.

One of the things that really turned us off about Japan was the aerial clutter.  There are power lines on poles, crisscrossing the sky like a vast network of spiderwebs — sometimes running right down the middle of the street, which is really weird.

Regardless of where you go in Japan it’s rare to look up at the sky or towards the horizon without the view being crisscrossed by thick, black cables and ugly power poles laden with cylindrical metal transformers.

The power system is clearly outdated and in constant need of maintenance.  We saw utility trucks and guys on ladders and in crane buckets constantly patching lines.

Other than a few of the modern shopping boulevards like in Teramachi Dori Street in Kyoto and Dotonbori Street in Osaka, where all of the power lines are buried underground, Japan looks like a Third World country in terms of it’s electrical power grid.

It really is mystifying why a nation like Japan which is so cutting edge when it comes to technology would still have a World War II era power network.  I mean, it works great, but it looks like total crap.

But in a country where beauty is so revered, the overhead power lines are ugly as hell.  And you notice it wherever you go.

So, why don’t the Japanese bury the lines?  The obvious reason is the cost.  It’s ten times more expensive to switch from overhead to underground.   The Japanese recognize that marring the scenery with overhead lines is not the beauty way.  So, they have started to slowly bury the lines.  But only 7 percent of Tokyo has underground cables.

The move toward burying the lines came not from aesthetics however, but rather from a study that was done after the Kobe earthquake in 1995.  The analysis determined that the above ground network was more badly damaged than the buried sections of the city.

But the argument cuts both ways because TEPCO, the Japanese power conglomerate, maintains that underground lines are harder to fix after flooding events and landslides, both of which happen all the time.

So, Japan is doing what every modern nation is doing when faced with the astronomical cost of converting their overhead power grid to an underground system.  They are eating the elephant one bite at a time.  In the meantime, the the electric lines blocking the sky serve as an example that nobody’s perfect.

The good news is that when you travel to Japan, you won’t need any special plugs or adapters.  The Europeans have to deal with that inconvenience, but not Americans.   The voltage in Japan is 100 Volt, which is different from North America (120V), Central Europe (230V) and most other regions of the world.  Japanese electrical plugs have two, non-polarized pins.  They fit into North American outlets.  What this means in practical terms is that they don’t have three prong outlets for grounding.  They have the old style two-pronged outlet.  So, you just need to bring along a two-pronged plug that has a three-pronged plug on the back side, and you’re good to go.