Google Sightseeing takes you on tour of the world as seen from satellite, using the free Google Earth program, or Google Maps in your web browser. Each weekday your guides James and Alex present new weird and wonderful sights as suggested by readers.
Floating away in the harbour of Tokyo is the Giant Japanese Battenburg storage depot.
Japan is the world’s second largest producer of oversized snacks, and over to the East they’re also farming massive Twiglets.
Seriously, can anyone solve the Battenburg mystery?
Thanks: Philipp Amann
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The second one are probably trees.
Well, you guys figured that out yourself probably
Surely at that size they’re not ‘Twiglets’ but ‘Treelets’?
The building to the left is the Tokyo Exhibition Center
http://www.bigsight.jp/english/
I haven’t managed to find any reference to the floating cake, but I guess it must’ve been some sort of art exhibit, or something
Waaaaaaah! Giant battenburg - love it!
My first impression was that since land is such a scarcity in Japan, it’s cheaper to have floating warehouses.
It’s clearly some kind of giant Tetris training camp…
Does anyone know what the railway-like tracks and depot to the west are? The curves are too tight and the carriages too short for it to be a normal railway. The appearance on the junctions indicates it is not a monorail either. One terminus to the North West of the battenburg is at a mainine railway station, where the difference in tracks can be seen. At the other end of the line, almost dirctly North of the battenburg, the tracks just end in mid air.
It´s a game of giant water chisen-cho!
HA i thought the same thing about tetris
wikimapia has it tagged but it’s in Japanese. I babelfished it and it came out as:
Attraction of Winds Castle
There’s a japanese anime by the name of “Howl’s moving castle” if I’m not mistaken. Never seen it, so I can’t really whether it has anything to with giant Battenburg in a harbour…
Oh: the wikipedia page on the movie mentions something of a castle: “a mobile, chaotic ensemble of metal scraps but a feat of magical engineering nonetheless. For example, the front door of the castle is magically connected to several buildings in different parts of the country”
And here is the wikipedia entry on the train Paul was wondering about. It’s a driverless train system.
Paul - it seems to be a Light Rapid Transit system (we call them trams round my way!).
Is it just my imagination or does the area round this place just look like Sim City?
Everything just seems so…erm…erh….unchaotic! I suppose that isnt a bad thing but it doesnt look very ‘real’.
what are they doing there?
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
building a bridge? looks strage. anyway, the whole area looks totally unreal to me. scary japanese engineering art. i’m sure they’ll take over the world some day.
What is a battenburg?
Ha ha! I was wondering how long it would take before someone asked that.
To our colonial cousins - Battenburg is a sponge cake made up of pink and yellow squares of sponge wrapped in marzipan. It is favoured by little old ladies and i’m sure many of us will have only eaten it on Sunday afternoon at our nana’s house.
It actually has a very interesting history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battenberg_cake
I’m surprised the GSS boys didnt explain as i’m sure it is only a European ‘delicacy’.
is this some rooftop model car race track?
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
Japan shares a small border with Russia, are you sure thats not part of Tetris floating in the harbour???
I think it is some ship poo floating around.
Here you can see a ship shitting into the harbour:
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
Cookie monster,
I figured the picture was explanation enough
I thing Vince is right. This is no cheap shit, it´s shipshit!
The floating storage is part of the Mitsubishi Logistics compound in Koto prefecture Yokohama. See - http://www.mitsubishi-logistics.co.jp/english/network/domestic_h/net02.html
The area to the east was once a huge timber processing plant, hence the floating timber yard.
19. Ben Says: October 21st, 2006 at 1:44 pm
is this some rooftop model car race track?
Google Maps Link
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Looks like the roof of a school to me
If you go a little further east and follow the water way there is another sort of holding pen for the twiggletts and right on the corner you can see the funnel for the wood to go on the conveyer which is an entry to the processing plant. Pretty cool. Still no clue on the cake.
If you look closely you can see ropes underneath , the ropes stop them from moving. I think it might be storage or somthing.
ice cubes… we know it’s hot there.
Yes the twiglets are raw logs - mostly cedar. We were cycling past there the other day after they’d been doing some cutting and there was the most wonderful smell for miles downwind.