Daibutsu, Kamakura

Daibutsu, Kamakura
Daibutsu in Kamakura, June 2010. There were thousands of school kids visiting that day. It was still great fun.

Wednesday, June 09, 2010

Cool Japanese manhole covers

Throughout Japan there are manhole covers with interesting designs or colorful pictures. During my recent Japan trip I came across these two in a quiet neighborhood in the small city of Otawara in Tochigi prefecture. I love that not only do they have these interesting pictures but they are in color as well. Pretty cool.



In the upper right corner of the fire truck cover is the symbol of the city of Otawara. Most or all cities in Japan have city emblems like this. This one and others remind me of mon, the emblems used to identify families or samurai clans such as the Tokugawa.

7 comments:

  1. Awesome covers! They can get very creative. I've seen a lot of those in Japan.

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  2. I have a small collection of pictures of different manhole covers.

    I read a post at Jamaipanese.com a few years ago that pointed me to some interesting manhole stuff.

    (Links at the bottom of the post)
    http://www.jamaipanese.com/in-japan-even-manhole-covers-are-extraordinary/

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  3. Yeah, I saw that post as well. There are a lot of cool looking manhole covers around Japan.

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  4. seeing this post is what inspired me to retweet my old post about these covers, seeing a link and reference to my page made me feel even better.

    Hope to be able to take pictures of the ones I see when I make it to Japan in 2011.

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  5. Yes, it's fun to try and find these when you visit Japan. Hopefully you will find some on your trip.

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  6. The samourai manhole cover is very beautiful

    ReplyDelete