Tag: Japan

Located in the city of Kitakyushu, Japan, Kawachi Fuji Garden is home to an incredible 150 Wisteria flowering plants spanning 20 different species. The garden’s main attraction is the Wisteria tunnel that allows visitors to walk down an enchanting tunnel exploding with colour.
Source: Pinterest / Twistedsifter

Kawachi Fuji Gardens in Kitakyushu, Japan ( 5 hours from Tokyo, if you take the Nozomi high speed train) is where you will find this pastel-colored fairytale tunnel. The gardens are home to about 150 Wisteria flowering plants spanning 20 different species (white, blue, purple, violet-blue and pink). This is the reason why the Wisteria tunnel is so colorful and graceful. Check out more in this link ( http://www.tourismontheedge.com/place…)

Best time to visit is from late April to mid May (depends on the weather each year). The peak is normally at end of April to the Golden Week. Not every year wisteria blooms so magnificently. To get to the garden from JR Yahata station, take Nishitetsu bus #56 and get off at Kawachi Elementary School. Then walk 10-15 min to the garden.

American Survey Team Member pauses in front of the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall 1945. The 4 square miles of densely built-up area in the heart of the city — residential, commercial, and military — contained three-fifths of the total population.

If there were about 245,000 people in the city at the time of the attack, the density in the congested area must have been about 35,000 per square mile. Five completed evacuation programs and a sixth then in progress had reduced the population from its wartime peak of 380,000. In Hiroshima the dwellings were of wood construction; very few were more than two stories. There were no masonry division walls.

Large groups of dwellings clustered together. The type of construction, coupled with antiquated fire-fighting equipment and inadequately trained personnel, made even in peacetime a high possibility of conflagration. Nearly seven percent of the residential units had been torn down to make firebreaks, but the firestorm jumped the human-made breaks and the rivers as well. Many buildings were of poor construction by American standards.

The principal points of weakness were the extremely small tenons, the inadequate tension joints, and the inadequate or poorly designed lateral bracings. Reinforced concrete framed buildings were not uniform in design and in quality of materials. Some of the construction details (reinforcing rod splices, for example) were often poor, and much of the concrete was definitely weak; thus some reinforced concrete buildings collapsed and suffered structural damage when within 2,000 feet of the hypocenter, and some internal wall paneling was demolished even up to 3,800 feet. Other buildings, however, were constructed far more strongly than is required by normal building codes in America, to resist earthquakes.

Since the 1923 earthquake, construction regulations in Japan have specified that the roof must safely carry a minimum load of 70 pounds per square foot (708 kilograms per square centimeter) whereas American 1945 requirements did not normally exceed 40 pounds per square foot (405 kilograms per square centimeter) for similar types. Though the regulation was not always followed, this extra strong construction was encountered in some of the buildings near ground zero at Hiroshima, and undoubtedly accounts for their ability to withstand atomic bomb pressures without structural failures.

Kinkaku-ji (金閣寺, literally “Temple of the Golden Pavilion”), officially named Rokuon-ji (鹿苑寺, literally “Deer Garden Temple”), is a Zen Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan.It is one of the most popular buildings in Japan, attracting a large number of visitors annually. It is designated as a National Special Historic Site and a National Special Landscape, and it is one of 17 locations making up the Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto which are World Heritage Sites.

Read more about this magnificent building here.  

Want to visit The Golden Temple? Check out their home page here