Giant Sinkhole Disappears In Days Due To Japanese Efficiency

How long do you think it would take to repair this
giant sinkhole? For the Japanese, just a few days, it turns out. Add caption 

Back on November 8, a giant sinkhole opened up on a very busy street in the Japanese city of Fukuoka.

The sinkhole, 98 feet across and 50 feet deep, might have been triggered by nearby railroad tunnel construction.

Luckily, nobody was hurt, but the sinkhole cut electricity and gas service to parts of the busy neighborhood.

But, in just a few days, the busy street was back open, stronger than ever. The city said the street was built with a much more sturdy sub-base than the sand that was there beforehand.

Watch this fascinating time lapse of how quickly the city fixed the sinkhole and got the city of Fukuoka back to normal in just days:

Sad, Brief Visits To Fukushima Earthquake Nuclear Disaster Haunts

Five years ago, that epic earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster struck Japan.

Fukushima, the town where the nuclear plants basically imploded and leaked like crazy, was abandoned, perhaps never to be resettled. Or if it is, not for awhile.

People who lived there sometimes return for brief visits, but they have to try to move on with their lives the best they can.

Photojournalists Guillaume Bression and Carlos Ayesta have been periodically going to the Fukushima disaster zone to document the deteriorating, abandoned ruins.

In their latest release of photos, called "Retrace Our Steps," people who had fled returned to once familiar surroundings and posed as if they were doing what they would normally do before the disaster hit.

The photographers asked their subjects to act as normally as possible, and at least pretend to do what they would do if things were normal.

The photos in this post are examples of Ayesta and Bression's work. Click this link for more. 

Reports Featureshoot.com: 

"Ayesta and Bression asked that they sit how they would have years earlier, before the catastrophe, when daily life lumbered on as usual. It was a process, says Ayesta, of 'reconstituting normal life in chaos,' a 'life that will never be the same as before.'"  

Earlier, they photographed vegetation taking over everything in the post-apocalyptic landscape.

The photographs are haunting and terribly sad. There's something about images depicting normal life interrupted, destroyed and abandoned that send shivers down my spine.

H/T to Bored Panda for this. 

More Proof That Gardens Can Ease A Troubled Mind

The Koroki homestead in Japan, in full bloom. 

A saw a nice (and very pink floral!) story on boredpanda.com, via rocketnews24 the other day about how a nice husband and Japan treated his wife for her sudden blindness.

The wife had diabetes, and that diseased caused her to become depressed and withdrawn. Mrs. Kuroki stayed in the house all the time and didn't want to do anything.

Mr. Kuroki worried and wondered how to help his wife feel better about himself.

His wife lost her sight, but didn't lose her sense of smell, he reasoned, so he spent two years planting fragrant pink flowers around the dairy farm and house where the couple lived.

It worked! Mrs Kuroki came out of her shell and outside, where she could smell all the flowers.

The flowers also became a local tourist attraction, so all that activity helped raise her spirits, too.

I guess what the Kurokis did is why so many of us plant flowers around our houses. I don't think I have the energy to plant several acres  of flowers, but I'll sure as hell keep adding more as soon as spring weather comes.

Here's a quick video of the couple in their pink garden:

Dramatic Video: Hikers Caught On Volcano During Deadly Eruption

Ash from an abruptly erupting Japanese volcano
closes in on hikers Saturday.  

UPDATE: Sadly, word has spread since I wrote this post Saturday morning that about 30 hikers died when they were overtaken by ash on the slopes of this volcano.

Very sad, indeed.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION:

The Japanese volcano Mount Ontake erupted today, and some people were too close when it belched a massive cloud of ash.

At least eight people have been injured, according to media reports, some of them hikers on the mountain when it blew.

Here's a video of hikers on the volcano trying to escape as the enormous ash cloud mushrooms toward them:

Guy Dressed As Cute Zebra Ensures Japan Zoo is Ready for Earthquake

I love this BBC video I found of workers at a Japanese zoo having an earthquake preparedness drill.

The idea of such a drill is smart, given how Japan has so many earthquakes.

But this is hilarious. The workers are practicing for what happens if panicked animals escape during an earthquake.

To do that, a guy dressed as a happy zebra bumps into a guy and the guy play acts being dramatically knocked down. Apparently that represents an attack by a zebra.

Finally, they shoot the "zebra" with a tranquilizer gun, and the "death scene" is the climax of this disaster scene.

Watch and have fun:

Misery in Japan and Miserable People

Note: This is something of a rewrite of my blog from its previous location, mattalltrades.wordpress.com

At first, I will post new items and recent ones from the old site here at blogger.

The entire archive of photos remains at www.mattalltrades.wordpress.com

The post:

People, predictably, have been getting in trouble for saying wildly inappropriate things about the tragedy in Japan.

We do have an amazing capacity for stupidity, so that's to be expected. I say the wrong things sometimes, so I'm not immune from commenting stupidly on awful things like the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear disaster.

Some things I've seen take the cake. I saw a YouTube video this week called "God is So Good" It's a valley girl type idiotic woman who is SO HAPPY the earthquake happened in Japan

She's what is know as a YouTube troll. She posts videos sure to anger people, because I guess she likes angry people. Or people who are angry at her. A self-esteem issue perhaps?

YouTube troll tamtampamela

Part of it is she wants a lot of hits on her videos, and she can make money through advertising this way. Piss people off, make money. And I realize I'm violating the "Please don't feed the trolls adage fro on line behavior. But here, I can't resist.

Anyway, she says she's been praying that God would offer a sign that those awful atheists, of which she said Japan has plenty, would show the world who's boss. And he did!, she says, with that earthquake and tsunami.

Watch this bozo's video if you can stomach it:

I've never wanted to slap the smug look off somebody's face more than I do hers.

The worst quote from the vid: "I'm so amazing God has answered prayers like this. I'm so overjoyed and so encouraged," she said.

Yeah, and she should have been standing on the beach in Japan when the tsunami came in. Overjoyed? Encouraged? Eve if she is "joking," tell that in person to a Japanese tsunami victim, then, and see what reaction you get, you slimeball.

As you might imagine, our "God is So Good" piece of crap of a ditz has gotten a lot more hate than even she thought she's imagine. Some resourceful people have posted her name and address on line. People have gone so far as to threaten to rape and kill her.

I know the Internet is the land of frontier justice, but death and rape threats are no good, obviously. But you'd think she would have anticipated one of her troll videos would eventually garner such a response. People have ordered zillions of pizzas to be delivered to her door, as a prank. I do hope she continues to have a miserable time for awhile.

Maybe we can make her go to Japan for a year and clean up the muck left by the tsunami.

She's asking that people stop being mean to her now, but the blogosphere and on line world is having none of it. The woman, known as Tamtampamela, is still getting incredible hate directed her way. Though she doesn't deserve the death and rape threats, she does deserve the generalized hate.

Let that be a lesson to you, sweetie.

I've seen other examples of Japan disaster stupidity. In saw a post on Facebook from someone I know who posted a video of the tsunami. The person who posted the video said she is praying for the Japanese, was upset about the disaster and urged people to help.

The Facebook post was a giving, loving gesture.

However, it always takes one person to muck up a bit of kindness. One guy who responded to the Facebook post said the Japanese got what they deserved, because some fishermen there kill dolphins for food. It was karma, he said.

So 10,000 or so people deserve to die and millions deserve to suffer because a few dozen people in Japan engage in the ethically dark activity of hunting dolphins? Oookay..... The mean Facebook poster really deserves his OWN awful karma.

Also because of the Japan disaster, Gilbert Gottfried is no longer the voice of the Aflac duck. A tragedy, of course. Gottfried tweeted some wildly inappropriate, insensitive jokes about the Japan disaster, so Aflac dropped him like well, a dead duck.

Frankly, I'm not exactly upset that Gottfried lost his job......