On Mon, 15 Dec 2003 05:49:02 +0900, matt@gol.com (Matthew Endo)
belched the alphabet and kept on going with:

>Michael Cash <mikecash@sunfield.ne.jp> wrote:
>
>> I really appreciate you taking the time to answer this guy, Eric. I'm
>> afraid if I answered him my blood pressure would shoot up high enough
>> to rupture any aspiring aneurysms I may be harboring.
>
>I second Mike's appreciation.  It isn't easy feeding a troll, or one who
>won't believe the illogical and sometimes dangerous laws/rules/customs
>in Japan.
>
>To the original poster, Michael Gira, how long have you been in Japan?
>
>P.S. To Senor Cash, what do you think of the construction on Yamate
>doori with the underground roadway?

I've been through it so many times and over such a long period that I
am actually on speaking terms with a couple of the construction
guards. Sad, ain't it?

They're supposed to have it wrapped up in about three or four more
years. It'll be interesting to see how it turns out. As you know, they
are extending the C2 line of the expressway. That will be a
much-welcomed line. As it is now, use of the expressway coming down
from the ex-Urawa area south involves a bit of a 遠回り to the east.
The surface road is supposed to go to something like 6 lanes. They're
coming right along on demolishing buildings and wrapping up new
construction set farther back from the road. Lots of pedestrian
overpasses have been demolished and new wider ones are going up. It'll
be interesting to see what they do in the area around Naka-Meguro
station. It is currently four lanes, but the outer lanes are pretty
much taken over by illegal parking, so you may as well consider it a
two lane. I strongly doubt that they're going to do the sort of
wholesale demolition necessary to widen the road to six lanes in that
area. I suspect they will just leave it as a bottleneck. Yet another
example of the fine road planning conducted by Mr. Nariyuki Makase.

The amount of junk one has normally expands to fill 100+% of the space
available for it, and I would be surprised if that doesn't also apply
to the New&Improved Yamate-doori when they get it done. The passenger
car traffic probably won't increase nearly as much as the truck
traffic will. I expect that quite a lot of the trucks currently using
Kan-nana and Showa-doori will start using the improved road and the
net result will be the same degree of cluster-fuck, but on a larger
scale.




--

Michael Cash

"Tom Cruise saves late 19th Century Japan from creepy politicians and creeping
Westernization in "The Last Samurai," another Hollywood epic that shows that 
nobody embodies the nobility of an exotic foreign culture like a visiting white 
guy."

                                John Beifuss