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Shirakawa village – JAPAN
Shirakawa is a village located in Ōno District, Gifu Prefecture, Japan. It is best known for being the site of Shirakawa-gō, a small, traditional village showcasing a style of buildings called gasshō-zukuri.
As of July 2011, the village has an estimated population of 1,734. The total area is 356.55 km².
The village is located near Takayama, in Gifu. Together with Gokayama in Nanto, Toyama, it is one of UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites.
Shirakawa is a mountain village located at the highest peak on Mount Haku in the Ryōhaku Mountains, where it borders Ishikawa prefecture. To the north it borders Mt. Ningyō, and it borders Gokayama in Toyama prefecture. The village’s area is 95.7% mountainous forests, and its steep places are characteristic. In between the mountains flows the Shō River, which continues to the north into Nanto in Toyama. Along the river there are a few flat areas, and human settlements are scattered near them.
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Seagaia Ocean Dome – JAPAN
The Seagaia Ocean Dome was the world’s largest indoor waterpark, located in Miyazaki, Japan. The Ocean Dome, which was a part of the Sheraton Seagaia Resort, measured 300 metres in length and 100 metres in width, and was listed on the Guinness World Records.
It opened in 1993, and visitor numbers peaked in 1995 at 1.25 million a year. Entrance cost was ¥2600 per adult and ¥1600 for children (roughly 30 and 20 USD in 1995 respectively) Japanese yen, depending on the season.
The Ocean Dome was officially closed on October 1, 2007 as part of a renovation and partial re-branding of the resort. The roof of the structure was retractable in four sections.
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Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line – JAPAN
The Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line (東京湾アクアライン tōkyō wan akua rain), also known as the Trans-Tokyo Bay Highway, is a bridge-tunnel combination across Tokyo Bay in Japan. It connects the city of Kawasaki in Kanagawa Prefecture with the city of Kisarazu in Chiba Prefecture, and forms part of National Route 409. With an overall length of 14 km, it includes a 4.4 km bridge and 9.6 km tunnel underneath the bay—the fourth-longest underwater tunnel in the world.
Overview
At the bridge-tunnel crossover point, there is an artificial island called Umihotaru with a rest area consisting of restaurants, shops and amusement facilities. Air is supplied to the tunnel by a distinctive tower in the middle of the tunnel, called the Kaze no Tō (風の塔, “the tower of wind”), which uses the bay’s almost-constant winds as a power source.
The road opened on December 18, 1997 after 31 years of construction at a cost of 1.44 trillion yen (11.2 billion USD at the time of opening).
The Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line reduced the drive between Chiba and Kanagawa, two important industrial regions, from 90 to 15 minutes, and also contributed to cut the travel time to the sea leisure area in the southern part of the Bōsō Peninsula from Tokyo and Kanagawa. Before the tunnel opened, one had to drive a roundabout 100 km along the shores of Tokyo Bay and pass through downtown Tokyo.
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