In 1991 a typhoon flooded 100 km² destroying more than 30,000 homes and killing 52 people. To prevent this, Japan began creating underground channels to avoid these floods. Thus, Tokyo and some metropolises in Japan are completely protected against floods from rain, typhoons, and tsunamis. Although the city is filled with buildings and tunnels underground, they are almost invisible to those on the surface.
One of these tunnels is the Kanda River Underground Retention Basin, 4.5 km in a tunnel that is 40 meters below the ground. This basin can hold up to 540,000 tons of water when Tokyo is hit by floods. In Osaka, we have the Hiranogawa reservoir, with 1.9 km to prevent flooding. There are several other small underground facilities, but today we will talk about the largest in the world.
G-Cans – The underground temple
There are underground constructions in Tokyo that started in the 90s and have pillars that weigh 500 tons. In this case, we are talking about the G-Cans Project, an underground facility to divert water from Tokyo to the Edogawa River. This facility has turbines and 78 pumps capable of draining more than 200 tons of water per second. There are 6.4 km of tunnels, 50 meters below the surface, and it cost more than 3 billion to build.
The site is used only a few times a year; you can visit this underground temple for free from Tuesday to Friday for an hour and a half. To do this, you must register in advance on the website below. We will also leave the address of the location.
- Website: http://www.ktr.mlit.go.jp/edogawa/gaikaku/english/index.html
- Address: 2nd Floor at Ryukyukan reception, 720 Kamikanasaki, Kasukabe city, Saitama 344-0111
- Phone: +81 48-746-0748
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