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Time Trip View: Nihonbashi 【Fuji TV Official】

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Travel through time with Time Trip View, a smartphone/tablet/telescope software developed by Fuji TV. Take a time trip from modern day Tokyo to the historic Edo Period, the Ginza district during the 1860s, or the trendy Nihonbashi district as it appeared 200 years ago. A long lost world is reacreated through the use of high quality computer graphics. For further information, visit

Kodaira Chuo Park & The Grey Road - February 5th, 2010

There is a 50-year-old plan still on the books to run a major four lane road right through the most wooded part of Kodaira's Chuo Park! Unfortunately, it's been dusted off and there is political push being applied to ram it down the throats of the residents/victims living in Kodaira City in western Tokyo.

Those pushing for this would say that it's only the edge of the park, but it's the one section of the park that is most full of trees. Aside from the destruction of these trees, the remainder of the park would be choking in diesel truck exhaust fumes and the current peace and tranquility of this oasis in Kodaira City (within Tokyo) would be ruined.

Proponents of the park destruction plan put together a highly insulting corporate style slide show that has the gall to call destroying people's homes, gardens, and the city park a progressive move to create a green network of roads. In a handout, they have green leaves on the cover and present their plan to lay down wide swaths of lifeless asphalt for the sake of loud and noxious gas-emitting machinery as something that will increase the amount of green and improve the area residents' lives!

It's highly insulting, and it's corporate-style PR at its most insidious - calling for a plan that will eradicate large numbers of trees in Kodaira and severely damage residents' quality of life as a plan to increase greenery and improve the resident's lives. It's like someone coming up to you with a knife and attempting to stab you while saying I want to stick this knife into you to make you healthier!. It's wrong. So very wrong...

This video shows the park, and a different section of the same *wonderful* (heavy sarcasm) road they want to extend through the park. Note that they have already begun cutting down trees in Chuo Park. The sophistic political line is that they are thinning them in order for light to better get to the other trees, but that doesn't fit with the way they eradicated an entire section of the trees in one corner of the park's grove of trees a couple of months ago (I show some of the stumps in this video). In fact, they've been cutting down 10-20 trees a year for the past few years. It looks as though it's an insidious plan to clear the trees and make way for noxious asphalt before the road has even been approved.

At a town hall meeting, the auditorium seats were completely full, and there were people standing along the edges, and every citizen who got a chance to speak (many more raised their hands to speak, but were not given a chance), spoke passionately about their strong opposition to this plan to ruin their quality of life. The politicians present acted as though it doesn't matter what the residents think and they're going to get the hideous ugliness that life beside a major road creates whether they like it or not. Those in the direct path of the road will have their homes destroyed (although the government will probably pay way-over market value for their homes to get them out of the way) and those left beside the new grey road will get noise and poison for air. Oh - and a few half-dead exhaust-choked bushes and small trees on the edge of the hideous grey road so the politicians can call it green.

The quality of life in Tokyo next to its major roads is universally poor. There are too many roads in Tokyo as it is! Let's not destroy the entire city! If the existing roads are too crowded, then there should be a push to reduce the number of cars on the roads. Tokyo has the best passenger train system in the entire world - the vast majority of people living here do not need cars - and shouldn't use them if it means the quality of life for residents is ruined with ever more roads. Better use of the rails system could also be implemented for freight - to reduce the number of noxious exhaust-spewing trucks on the road.

小平市の中央公園を守りましょ！ 車の為公園の森を壊す - 反対！

Koen Mamoro