Author: ilbonito

Tokyo, Japan | Instruments of Science

When the Roppongi Hills urban development project opened in 2003, it quickly wowed Tokyoites with its office towers, art museum, deluxe hotels, and prestigious shopping.

The most curious part of the development, however, is not its flashy design or luxury buildings, but the small garden that separates the office and cinema complex from a local TV studio.

Here, amid sunbathing office-workers and locals eating lunch, sits a quiet pond ringed by reeds and irises. The pond itself dates back to the late eighteenth century, but that’s not all: The pond is filled with tiny silvery fish – fish from beyond this world.

The pond’s medaka – a species of small freshwater fish once common in flooded Japanese rice paddies but highly susceptible to pesticides and fertilizer run-off – are descendants of those bred aboard the 1994 Columbia Space shuttle before its fateful mission.

The fish were bred as part of a series of experiments in extraterrestrial reproduction, and their descendants on earth continue to be studied by scientists.

A small sign asks people not to dump unwanted goldfish or other pets into the pond, in case they eat the precious space-fish. While the fish in the pond today were all born on terra firma, their origins are truly extra-terrestrial.

Buenos Aires, Argentina | Strange Statues

Designed and paid for by Argentine architect Eduardo Catalano, the Floralis Generica, a giant silvery flower, has been a striking city landmark since it opened in 2002.

The enormous metal flower blooms anew every day in a pool of water next to the National Museum of Fine Arts, revealing four long pistons inside. Its six 13-meter-long petals open – which takes about 20 minutes – at eight in the morning and slowly close again at sunset, mimicking the actions of a real flower. When the petals are closed, the 18 ton flower is 75 feet tall and 52 meters wide, and when blossomed this amazing man-made flora is an incredible 105 feet wide.

The constructed flower reflects the city around it in the aluminum of its petals. When the petals close at night, the flower glows red. On just four nights of the year, the petals of the Floralis Generica remain open: May 25, September 21, December 24 and 31, keeping Buenos Aires in flower all night long.

Tokyo, Japan | Disaster Areas

On March 1st 1954, the 23 crew members of the Japanese fishing boat “Daigo Fukuryu Maru” (“the Lucky Dragon”) were amazed to find a fine snow falling, far out to sea in the tropical North Pacific. For three hours the fine, yet warm, white substance fell. The curious fishermen gathered it up while they worked.

But that night they began to get sick. One died, and the others were to spend the next year in hospital . The “snow” they had sailed into was nuclear fallout; ashes from an experimental US detonation on Bikini atoll. Misjudging the strength of the explosion – 1,000 times stronger than that which flattened Hiroshima – the US government had failed to warn boats in the area, or locally stationed US personnel and Micronesian islanders.

When the boat returned to Japan it set off a panic. The WWII nuclear attacks were still fresh in the public imagination, and these new explosions (deep in the ocean that provided Japan with much of its seafood) rocked public confidence.

The boat was quarantined until it was deemed to be safe, and then returned to active service, and was eventually consigned to a scrapheap in a Tokyo waste dump.

In the 1980s that rubbish tip was transformed into a park through a land reclamation project called “Dream Island” (“Yumenoshima”). Local residents recognised the identity of the wrecked ship in the soon-to-be-redeveloped dump, and decided to preserve it, raising funds for a museum.

Today, the museum in Yumenoshima park houses the battered hulk of the “Lucky Dragon” and other exhibits warning of the dangers of nuclear war.

Next door, a simple marker commemorates the burying of the ship’s cargo – 450 tons of contaminated tuna – which was dumped to prevent it from being sold for human consumption.

Today this quiet, leafy corner of Tokyo, next to the lapping waters of Tokyo Bay, bears witness to the whole strange, sad story, one that has otherwise been all but forgotten.