A 13-floor apartment building under construction collapses in Minhang district, Shanghai Saturday morning June 27, 2009, killing one worker.
The construction fever hasn't stopped in China and new buildings are built every month in most major cities. Because of the high demand top materials and top workers are not always available. So the crash of this massive building is probably caused by bad materials and construction errors.
Japan is the number 1 car producer in the world. Everybody knows the big car brands like Toyota, Honda, Mazda,... These car companies have special models for Asia and specific models for Japan. As the Japanese are quite rich they also like to spend some money on their cars. That's why in Japan you can see a collection of different Japanese models and expensive foreign cars.
Do you know the ones in the pictures?
P.S. BMW and Mercedes are often associated with the Yakuza (Japanese Mafia), so normally Japanese people will not buy one.
A few nights ago I decided to spend a night in a capsulehotel. These kinds of hotels are typical for big business cities like Tokyo and Osaka. As the land prices in Japan have sky rocked out of proportions, a night in a hotel room is quite expensive. But capsulehotels are not really meant for tourist who want to look for cheap accommodations. The rooms are too small and impractical for this purpose.
Businessman in major cities in Japan have a hard and tense life, so they like to relax with colleagues after work. But when relaxing and having fun, time is sometimes forgotten. If you miss your last train, around 00.30. You might have several options. Take a taxi for about 10.000 ¥ and go sleep home or stay in a cheap accomodation, such as a capsulehotel (3000-4000¥ a night). So most capsulehotels are found near train stations in the middle of the city.
I spend the night at a caspulehotel in Shimbashi. Before getting in I had to pay for the night and found a small locker room next to the reception. In the locker room the shoes had to be taken off and slippers would replace them. Accessing the elevator brings me to the second floor, where I find a corridor with 20 capsule rooms. I open mine and sigh in relief, it is bigger than I thought. I was thinking of sleeping in a space as big as those drawers where they put the corpses in hospital. Mind you I can not stand up in the capsule, just sit and bent my head. In a side room of the corridor I find 3 toilets and 2 sinks and 1 shower. As I am the second guest, one person is already watching TV in his capsule, I can notice from the slippers in front of his capsule. So I change clothes to a pyjama, similar to a hospital's gown, provided by the hotel. Inside I have a small control panel where I can switch off the light and can control the radio and TV. I turn on the radio to find out there are 12 channels. 1 channel has English movies and 2 channels provide Japanese (block)porn. Nothing interesting so I decide to get a sleep as it is still quiet.
In the middle of the night different people get in between midnight and 2 am. The corridor fills up with an awful booze smell and my half-sleep gets totally disrupted. The air con is not working well and I don't want to open up the sliding door.
In the morning I wake up around 7.00 and decided to get up and take a shower. When I climb out of my capsule I see more than a dozen pair of slippers, all the capsules got filled up in the night. The snoring and alcohol smell fills up the room and I hurry to get take a shower, pack my stuff, take my shoes, return the key and get out.
Good experience but a terrible night, I suppose you have to be drunk to be able to sleep in a capsule hotel.
