TOKYO SKYTREE

The Tokyo Skytree is a broadcasting and observation tower in Sumida, Tokyo, Japan. At a height of 2,080 feet it is the tallest tower* in the world, and the second tallest structure in the world after the Burj Khalifa. *A tower is defined as: “a tall human structure, always taller than it is wide, for public or regular operational access by humans, but not for living in or office work, and is self-supporting or free-standing, which means no guy-wires for support. Continuously habitable buildings and skyscrapers, radio and TV masts, bridge towers, chimneys, transmission towers, sculptures and most large statues and obelisks do not come within the definition of tower”.

By Kakidai - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19574418

THE GATE TOWER BUILDING - JAPAN

The Gate Tower Building is a 16-floor office building in Osaka, Japan. It is notable for the highway offramp that passes through the building. The exit ramp passes between the fifth through seventh floors. The highway is the tenant of those floors. The elevator passes through the floors without stopping; floor 4 being followed by floor 8. The highway does not make contact with the building. It passes through as a bridge, held up by supports next to the building.

The Gate Tower Building in Osaka

TSUTOMU YAMAGUCHI – DOUBLE ATOMIC BOMB SURVIVOR

Tsutomu Yamaguchi (March 16, 1916 – January 4, 2010) was a survivor of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings during World War II. Although at least 70 people are known to have been affected by both bombings, he is the only person to have been officially recognized by the government of Japan as surviving both explosions. HIROSHIMA BOMBING: Yamaguchi lived and worked in Nagasaki, but in the summer of 1945, he was in Hiroshima for a three-month long business trip. On August 6, he was preparing to leave the city and was on his way to the station when he realized that he had forgotten his travel papers. He returned to his workplace to retrieve them and at 8:15 as he was nearing his workplace the atomic bomb exploded 3 kilometers (1.86 miles) away. Yamaguchi recalls seeing the bomber and two small parachutes, before there was “a great flash in the sky, and I was blown over”. The explosion ruptured his eardrums, blinded him temporarily, and left him with serious burns over the left side of the top half of his body. He spent the night in an air-raid shelter before returning to Nagasaki the following day. In Nagasaki, he received treatment for his wounds, and despite being heavily bandaged, he reported for work on August 9. NAGASAKI BOMBING: At 11 a.m. on August 9, Yamaguchi was describing the blast in Hiroshima to his supervisor, when the atomic bomb exploded over the city. His workplace again put him 3 kilometers from ground zero, but this time he was unhurt by the explosion. However, he was unable to replace his now ruined bandages, and he suffered from high fever and continuous vomiting for over a week.  In 1957, he was recognized as a hibakusha (explosion-affected person) of the Nagasaki bombing, but it was not until March 24, 2009, that the government of Japan officially recognized his presence in Hiroshima three days earlier. He died of stomach cancer on January 4, 2010, at the age of 93.

FLOOR NUMBERING IN ELEVATORS IN EAST ASIA

Because the Chinese, Sino-Japanese, Sino-Korean and Sino-Vietnamese word for four sounds quite similar to the word for death, floor numbers containing a 4 are often skipped in buildings, ranging from hotels to offices to apartments, as well as hospitals.

ELEVATOR PANEL IN BUILDING IN CHINA

PET MODE ELEVATOR OPERATION IN JAPAN

Pet mode is a special operation for elevators with pets inside, developed by Fujitec. It is activated by a button labeled (see photo below). It is only found in XIOR elevators in Japan.

When a pet owner enters the elevator with his/her pet, the pet owner presses the “pet” button and then the floor button. The floor indicator will display "PET ON BOARD" (in English and Japanese). The elevator will then bypass all floors until it reaches the destination. If there are multiple destinations, it will only be deactivated when all destinations are served. 

HASHIMA ISLAND (GUNKANJIMA “BATTLESHIP ISLAND”) JAPAN

At Japan’s westernmost tip, 505 uninhabited islands dot the Sea of Japan. One of them, Hashima Island, was purchased by Mitsubishi Motors in 1890 when coal was discovered there. The company built a giant rectangular seawall around the island, to protect it from typhoons, and as a result, the island is still called Gunkanjima in Japanese – “Battleship Island”.

In the 1950s, Hashima Island was the most densely populated place on earth.

Huge apartment towers, Japan's first big concrete buildings, were built to house the army of workers that Hashima's mine required. By 1959, there were 5,259 people living there, on a footprint smaller than many sports stadiums. That gave the island a population density of over 216,000 residents per square mile, more crowded than any other island in the world.

In 1974, Mitsubishi shut down the mine. Japan's coal industry had collapsed due to the country's switch to petroleum. Within a few months, the entire island was completely deserted: a vertical concrete ghost town where desks still sat in schoolrooms, furniture and TV sets still in apartments.

The Island was formally approved as UNESCO World Heritage Site in July 2015, as part of Japan’s Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution; Iron and Steel, Shipbuilding and Coal Mining.

HASHIMA ISLAND, JAPAN