Junction Fetish

January 6, 2009 9:17 PM

Large Commuter Collider The Ōhashi Junction is rad.

Looking for all intents and purposes like a modern-day Coliseum, the Ōhashi Junction will be about the same size as the National Olympic Stadium when complete. It's really a marvel of modern engineering, and for those lucky enough to be in Tokyo, you can actually go walking through it for a limited time.

I don't know why people don't fetishize junctions more.

(I apologize for all the Japanese, just jump to the photos)
posted by odasaku (16 comments total)

2008年は「ジャンクションの年」

2008 is year of the junction!
posted by KokuRyu at 9:28 PM on January 6, 2009

So, what does it do?
posted by RussHy at 9:52 PM on January 6, 2009

It juncts obviously.

It's weird that in Japan junctions look like Tomorrow Land and in the US they more usually recall something like Max Headroom.

Cool post!
posted by Potomac Avenue at 9:59 PM on January 6, 2009

As a resident of San Francisco, I thank the powers for the Freeway Revolt. I would not object to underground roads, though. Olympic stadium sized onramps leading to elevated freeways is another story.

Still, I guess that's why we'll never have the density of Tokyo.
posted by alexei at 10:00 PM on January 6, 2009

I grew up in Apache Junction -- but I'd be careful how I chose to fetishize it if I were you, some of those cactus spines are barbed and can't be removed without pliers.
posted by hermitosis at 10:04 PM on January 6, 2009

See also: SPUI
posted by Saucy Intruder at 10:12 PM on January 6, 2009

Ok, so these are people movers.

I wonder why scifi/specfi/anime/whatever haven't come up with better ways to move jobs/places?
posted by porpoise at 10:34 PM on January 6, 2009

This is the kind of thing you get when there is almost absolutely no place left to put a espressway interchange. Tokyo is crawling with engineering solutions to problems of space. That's why you have that famous 'road going through a highrise'. That's why so many of the canals have been roofed over with elevated carriageways.
In more authoritarian countries the solution would of course be simply to aquisition the necessary land by force of law or simply by force, and in the end the collective good of improved traffic flow would turn out for the best (allegedly). However Japan have quite good protection of private property am I right? And so the result is that road construction in the city is hideously expensive due to the need to put everything either up in the air or into the ground.
But it gets done nonetheless because it has to.
posted by Catfry at 11:36 PM on January 6, 2009

Yes, Japan has stronger protections (or rather, stronger taboos) against eminent domain than compared to, say, the United States, I believe. It's one of the reasons that the runway expansion at Narita Airport has never been completed.
posted by armage at 11:59 PM on January 6, 2009

Wow, that is awesome.

Now I wish I had a chance to walk the New Beacon Hill Reservoir here in seattle.

Or really, any of the tunnels or underground structures that are places most people never really pass through. (I know about UE, but most of these places are pretty much off limits anyway, unless you actually work on them, and are monitored all the time).
posted by mrzarquon at 12:01 AM on January 7, 2009

You can walk there? For how long, just open during oshougatsu, or is it still open to public?
posted by lundman at 12:16 AM on January 7, 2009

Ah, came from this:
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/columns/0003/contrast004.htm
But it is dated 2007, and the by-pass is partially open to traffic, I'm guessing talking a walking tour would be inadvisable.
posted by lundman at 12:27 AM on January 7, 2009

When you mentioned fetish and the Japanese in the same sentence, I was so expecting it to be something like the fighter-jets-imagined-as-scantily-clad-anime-girls thing that went around some months ago.
posted by JHarris at 1:50 AM on January 7, 2009

(Well, consecutive sentences. Oy.)
posted by JHarris at 1:51 AM on January 7, 2009

Well it's no Swindon Magic Roundabout, that's for sure.
posted by rusty at 8:30 AM on January 7, 2009

When I'm in a passenger in a car going down the freeway, I like to daydream about our civilization suddenly disappearing, and the only major artifact that's left behind being the freeways, with their complicated junctions and nested overpasses.

Naturally, the conclusions of the alien archaeologists will be that they served a ritual function.
posted by happyroach at 9:29 AM on January 7, 2009