Harumi - low lying land

From Harumi Pier, which is a dead end, we walked back towards the Sumida.  The area here is reclaimed and quite close to the level of the sea.  Flood (ie from tsunami, tides, and typhoon) mitigation efforts have been made, but I'd still have reservations about living somewhere that appears so vulnerable not just to extremes of water, but also the threat of liquefaction in event of an earthquake.

A new bridge under construction - the halt to plans to move the
fishmarkets from Tsukiji to the other side of this bridge in Toyosu
will no doubt mean a lot less traffic.

Flood gates to side across to block off the streets in the event
of typhoon, tsunami or higher than usual tides.

Explaining the floodgates

The flood gates slide across and lock into place.

Nothing to do with flood gates - some of the man hole covers of

Chuo Ku (local govt area) have lilies - the symbol of the ku.

The areas that will and won't be protected in the event of a flood

Kobe: the waterfront

Kobe's other notable feature is the waterfront. 

The city is on the western end of Osaka Bay and reclaimed lands extends from the coast line for kilometres into the Bay.  Kobe was able to expand as a vibrant port by adding extra port facilites built out from the shoreline and buidling on the reclaimed islands.(see the map).  Like Kansai International, Kobe airport is built on a reclaimed land in Osaka bay. It had been planned for many years but was given the go-ahead after the earthquake as part of government intervention to revive Kobe.

In the late 1970s, before the rise of China, Kobe was the busiest container port in the world.  The Hanshin earthquake of 1995 was particularly devastating on the waterfront and while Kobe remains a busy port it is now ranked 45th busiest internationally and 4th busiest in Japan.   

The waterfront mixes funpark activity and hotels,  parkland, museums and earthquake memorials, with ship construction, container facitlities and an airport. 

Merikan Park  - the earthquake damaged pier in the picture above has been kept as a memorial of  the quake.

Merikan Park

The park takes its name from a shortening of American; it is the site of the old US embassy.

A ferris wheel

Heavy industry

The map comes from

http://www.flyingangelkobe.org/ 

Tokyo Bay

Following on from the entry about the reclaimed Jonanjima Park (Jima = shima = island), I thought something about land reclamation in Tokyo Bay might be apt.  This picture, which comes courteousy of Wikipedia, shows contemporary Tokyo Bay. Yokohama and Kawasaki are on the south west shoreline, Tokyo in the North and North West, Chiba (which includes Disney) starts in the north and goes down the whole eastern length.
You can see clearly by the carved angular teeth that jut out into the bay, there is a lot of reclaimed land.  There are maps that show the change in the shape of Tokyo Bay over the history of land reclamation.  A quick google didn't turn it up - but I will keep an eye out in the future.
The changes in the shape of Tokyo Bay over the past 250  years are quite extreme.  The difference between the built up Tokyo-Yokohama stretch is also sharp contrast to the much less densely populated southern Chiba.