One of the things that I really wanted to achieve before I left Tokyo was to see the little-known G-Cans Project – a huge network of drainage tunnels that lie underneath the city (or more accurately its far Northern Saitama suburbs). The network of tunnels includes this spectacular, cathedral-like drainage chamber and a 6km long tunnel that is ten metres high, plus five storage tanks, each of them large enough to contain the Statue of Liberty or Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Together with Daisuke, Taizo, Rie, Ryu, Kenji, Alex and Hitomi, I set out into the tunnels; you have to sit through a boring high-schoolish lecture at the visitors centre and then you descend into a cool, gloomy bunker. The first sight of the columns – wreathed in chilly mist ina huge echoing chamber – is truly spine tingling. Unfortunately though the “tour” doesnt go anywhere else. We didnt get to see this, for instance:
After the tunnels we hopped on a train to Kawagoe, once a farming town but now far-flung Tokyo sattelite suburb, but still known as “Little Edo” for its quaint street of craft shops and traditional Japanese sweets.
