This week’s Friday post is a bit of a cheat post for me. There won’t be a lot of information as I will post mostly photos. It is a little change as I wanted to little treat for Lina at Urutora no Hi. She enjoys manhole covers in Japan so when I went on my Setouchi Triennale, I took snaps of a few manhole covers and I hope she likes it. Manhole covers in Japan are pretty famous. You can even find books detailing them and where they come from. Manhole covers are pretty expensive and Japan has the best ones.
The first one is from Takamatsu. It’s of an archer pointing his arrow to the sky.
Takamatsu Manhole Cover
The one is from Naoshima. This cover has the symbol/flower of Naoshima.
Naoshima Manhole Cover
I didn’t see many manholes in the Setouchi area, so this one is from Okayama. It is of Momotaro.
Okayama Manhole Cover
Kurashiki, in Okayama, has this cute cover for fire hydrants. In Japan, they put fire hydrants underground.
Kurashiki Manhole Cover
I found the first one too! Uncoloured and coloured versions. Yeay! 😉
I didn’t find a coloured one of the first one. 🙁 Maybe next time. 😀
Thanks for all the nice manhole cover shots! Am enjoying them so much! 🙂
I love manholes! Err. That sounds wrong. I love manhole covers! This is a particularly nice collection.
PS: GCANS! When? 😀
Manholes should be a good way to get into G-CANS. 😉
If I can, I’ll have photos prepped and ready to upload. I just have to get things onto the blog. It’s all written and proofed. If I can work on it in the next 30 minutes, it will be up next week, Tuesday at midnight. My regular posting time. 😀
Tuesday?! Three days from now? Hmph. >:(
Don’t make me delay it. ;P
Besides, I worked late last night to finish it. All queued up. You will be having G-CANS this Tuesday. A good reason to stay up. The first of 2 posts about G-CANS. I also have a mini post on Friday that I want to put up if I can finish it soon. You’ll be having a “flood” of posts for a week. 😉
How do we persuade Lina to Google+? Shall I tell her about the train videos I’ve been posting?
I know you have those videos. I’m just lazy to know anything about that G+ thingy.
p.s. I accept bribes. 😉
Do you accept embezzlement? How about coercion? 😉
PS: You can easily get G+ if you have a g-mail or google account. Your blogger should allow you to create one. After that, if you want to keep it “private”, just create a G+ page.
Here, use this software which will give me full access to your computer and Google accounts and I can do it for you. 😉
I know! We can tell her about your hotel rooms post! Lina, hotel rooms with train themes and Ultraman themes and Hello Kitty themes. You can see that post if you Google+! C’mon, you’ll have great company.
She (or you) may be interested in this quiz. When you get the right answers, it gives an explanation of the significance of the image to the city. For example, the Takamatsu manhole cover is not pointing to the sky. It is pointing to the fan on the boat in the background:
http://www.sporcle.com/games/phibbyfan/japanmanholes
I would assume that the Takamatsu one is about the Taira and Genji clan war. I’m answering before I head over to do the quiz. I’ll be back with another reply after I do the quiz. 😉
Just finished the quiz. I got 13/20. I guessed one and half guessed a few others too. Some were pretty easy, like Okayama. 🙂
Glad to know I was right about the Takamatsu one. Your hint and reading about the Taira and Genji clan fight from Ru helped too.
I missed Tottori, even though I should have gotten that. I was there before but forgot the umbrellas are from there.
Missed Yokohama (kept thinking Akashi Ohashi instead), Wakayama (never been there), Shimonoseki (Was close. I kept saying Yamaguchi…), Kawagoe (completely lost), Ise (never been, so no chance), and Fukuoka (should’ve guessed it, but never been either).
Now I have to find photos of all of these. 🙂
I’ve started taking pictures of the manhole covers when I see them. It’s interesting which cities don’t really participate. Kyoto and Tokyo are the most obvious examples (unless certain districts have unique ones that I have not seen). Some cities have different manhole covers in different areas of the same city The manhole enthusiasts always try to find the colored ones which are often rare or difficult to find. haha
I think a lot of Tokyo has interesting manhole covers. You just need to look for them. Tokyo is kinda hard to call a city though. Here in Sumida-ku, Sumida is considered a city and they have their own special covers with a firework display on them. You just gotta look down, which is really hard to do when you are travelling and too busy looking up! 😀
Oh, I was looking for coloured Okayama and Takamatsu covers, but never did find them. 🙁
(Warning, nerd comment ahead) Takamatsu sort of has 2 colored ones. The common one has a simple yellow background. Then there is another that is colored properly that I have found outside of the shopping arcade. I didn’t take a picture of that one though (yet).
In spite of having been to Okayama many times, I’ve never seen a colored version of the above manhole. The fire manholes have a Momotaro fireman and those are colored but if there is a colored version of the above one, I do not know where it is.
I always thought the yellow coloured ones are for fire hydrants. They have the yellow around the cover too to signify that you can’t park there. Hopefully you can show me the coloured ones in the future. 🙂
PS: I like nerd comments. They are fun. 😀
Really thank you for your wonderful photos of Japan manhole covers. I love pretty manhole cover desgin and manhole cover culture.
Glad you like it. I need to add more in the future though. 🙂
Hi,really thank you for you quick reply. Last year,i went to Tokyo for a business trip. I found so many different designs of Japan manhole covers,which is more beautiful than manhole covers in other countries.