3 private broadcasters link disaster aid pact
Three private radio broadcasting companies in the Kansai region facing the Bay of Osaka signed an agreement on September 1, the Disaster Prevention Day, to mutually help when an earthquake, a tsunami or other natural disasters occur.According to the National Association of Commercial Broadcasters in Japan (NAB), such agreement is the first by private radio broadcasters in Japan.
Under the agreement, Osaka Broadcasting Corp. (OBC) of Osaka City, Radio Kansai Co. (RKC) of Kobe City and Wakayama Broadcasting System (WBS) of Wakayama City, will broadcast information gathered by a damaged broadcaster or damaged broadcasters on their behalf.
The three companies said when a disaster damages studios, transmission antennas and other facilities, making them unable to broadcast, damaged broadcasters will transmit disaster, safety and lifeline information they have gathered to other broadcasters using transmitting vehicles and other means to be broadcast specially.
Announcers and reporters of damaged broadcasting companies may move to other broadcasters for broadcasting to damaged areas on an emergency basis. As many of the audible areas of the three companies are overlapping, undamaged broadcasters can transmit disaster information of damaged broadcasters to people usually listening to them.
For inquiries, Planning and Programming Division , Radio Kansai (TEL: 078-362-7376)
International puppetry festival in Osaka
The Osaka municipal government will sponsor the 'Osaka International Puppetry Festival 2005' at four places in the city on the occasion of Japanese puppet show bunraku, traditional performing arts, being designated as UNESCO's World's Intangible Cultural Heritage.The festival, in which various puppet shows across the world are shown, will be held at the Osaka Cultural Public Hall, the Sogo Hall, the Children Culture Center and the Kids Plaza Osaka in the city from November 3 to 13.
To be invited to the event from overseas are Canada's Soma International which performs on the rhythms of jazz and rock'n'roll and South Korea's Namsa-Dang, the sole traditional puppet show existing in the country, as well as puppet companies in Italy, Spain, Taiwan, Laos and Russia.
From Japan, 17 traditional arts and modern puppet companies including the Ningyokan Poh, born in Osaka 38 years ago, will take part in the festival. A total of 59 performances are scheduled during the 11-day period.
Visitors can enjoy seeking puppet shows by comparing Japanese with foreign ones. A workshop will also be held.
For inquiries, please contact Executive Committee/Secretariat, Osaka International Puppetry Festival 2005 (Tel: 06-6615-0689) URL http://www.oipf2005.com
Omihachiman works out waterways' scenery project
Omihachiman in Shiga Prefecture known as a city with historical streets, the Hachiman canal and 'waterways tours' by sightseeing vessels had worked out the 'Omihachiman Waterways' Natural Environment and Scenery Project' under the 'Landscape Law' enacted by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport in June 2004 and began implementing the plan on September 1. The ministry, regarding landscape as assets of the people, enacted the law to protect scenery with a combination of regional culture and nature. It said Omihachiman is the country's first municipal government to have worked out such plan under the law.
The plan aims at turning the city into a lifelong living place for citizens by regarding its scenery as part of the succession of nature, history and culture, and not for merely tourism purposes.
The municipal government has designated the city's waterways' area about 1,600 hectares wide also recognized by the state as one of the Aquatic Scenery's Top 100 Views as the 'Omihachiman Waterways' Natural Environment and Scenery Zone' and limits the height of houses to be newly built or to be expanded and reconstructed to less than 10 meters, and up to two stories, and requires the use of natural colors.
Those who do not follow the municipal government's guidance are subject to an imprisonment of less than one year or a fine of less than 500,000 yen.
For inquiries, please contact Natural Environment and Scenery Preservation Div., Department of Construction, Omihachiman City (Tel: 0748-36-5596) URL http://www.city.omihachiman.shiga.jp/
3 private railway companies to begin unique service
Three private railway companies in the Kansai district -Hankyu Railway, Keihan Electric Railway and Nose Electric Railway - began a monitoring test on September 1 for a unique service as part of their efforts to secure the safety of children.Using the fare settlement IC card 'PiTaPa,' the companies will send information by e-mails to parents when their children pass through ticket gates. The service is temporarily called 'Goopas.'
Applied to this service is a service about information along railway lines provided by PiTaPa-goopas Corp. When registered children pass through ticket gates at stations nearest to their homes, and stations nearest to their schools or cram schools using 'PiTaPa' cards, the server put the information together, and the passage information will be sent by e-mails to mobile phones of their guardians in 20-30 seconds.
The monitoring test will be carried out until October 31 with cooperation from the private Hibarigaoka Elementary School in Takarazuka City, Hyogo Prefecture, and the cram school Nichinoken Corporation Kansai headquartered in Kobe City.
Whether to launch a full-scale service will be determined after studying questionnaires from guardians. There are already services sending information about entry to and departure from schools and cram schools to guardians, but ticket gate passage information service by e-mails is Japan's first.
For inquiries, please contact PiTaPa-goopas Corp. (Tel: 06-6252-1723) URL http://holdings. hankyu.co.jp/
Nara's Heijo Palace turns out to be wider
Yamatokoriyama City's Board of Education and the Gangoji Institute for Research of Cultural Property have announced the discovery of the grid system of streets modeled on such streets in China in the southern end of Kujo Street thus far considered to be outside of the Heijo Palace (710-784). It was found in the Shimomitsuhashi ruins in the city.Also confirmed was the existence of castle walls whose existence has been pointed out but has not been confirmed. As a result, the palace area's eastern half spread at least more than 400 meters to the south, rewriting the 100-year-old established theory that there were nine streets from the north and south of the palace.
The roadside ditches found in the survey this time appeared to be buried intentionally in a short period of this for unknown reasons. The vestiges of the grid system of streets completely disappeared due to land allotment work carried out later in standards different from those regular at the Yamato basin.
Since the Edo period when attempts to restore the Heijo Palace were carried out, nobody has noticed the existence of the grid system of streets there.
For inquiries, please contact Board of Education, Yamatokoriyama City (TEL: 0743-53-1151) URL:http://www.city.yamatokoriyama.nara.jp/index.htm
1st grade Kyoto tourist certification test
The Kyoto Chamber of Commerce and Industry has announced guidelines for applications to the Kyoto Tourist and Culture Certification Test to recognize the knowledge about Kyoto's history, culture, nature and living, and said the first grade will be newly created.It is targeted at those who obtained the second grade in the first such test conducted in 2004. In the test for the second and third grades, applicants can choose correct answers from a list of answers, but those for the first grade will be required to answer in writing and write a short essay.
Questions will cover shrines, temples and other knowledge about Kyoto, including Kyo confectionery, Kagai entertainment area, language and legend. The test will be held on December 1 at a university in the city.
A total of 9,801 people from across the country took the first test last year, and 2,526 of them were successful for the third grade and 1,150 for the second grade. Housewives and senior citizens were most successful, followed by those in the transportation and communication industries, including taxi drivers, and those in the service industry, including people working at hotels and inns.
Together with the Kyoto Management Association, the chamber will hold a lecture on Kyoto for test applicants at the Shinjuku Island Wing in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward on September 25-26.
For inquiries, please contact Kyoto Test Secretariat Center, Kyoto Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Tel: 075-353-5959) URL http://www.kyo.or.jp/kyoto/index.shtml
Kansai in Focus: Umeda has the country's largest underground 'city'
Visitors to Osaka City's Umeda, one of the Kansai region's representative places, are somewhat perplexed to see only a small number of pedestrians walking on the streets despite it being the city center. Commuters crossing the streets in front of the east side of JR Osaka Station during rush hours are said to be fewer in number than those crossing streets in front of the statue of loyal dog Hachiko at JR Shibuya Station in Tokyo in the daytime.Streets in Umeda, one of business and commercial centers in the Kansai region of more than 24 million people, are not being used fully. But if you go underground, you can see people jostling their shoulders like in rush hours. A 'town' is spreading under Umeda.
Underground shopping centers are everywhere in the country. But one of them, the Yaesu underground shopping center in Tokyo with the second largest total floor space has no image of a town but is a pure shopping center. Its maze-line tunnel network linking subway stations exists only for people to go on the ground.
There are also Japan's largest-class underground shopping centers both in terms of floor space and space for stores in Osaka's Shinsaibashi, Nanba, and Kobe's Sannomiya, prominent busy sections in Kansai.
Shopping center equipped with everything
The center in Shinsaibashi, called Shinsaibashi Crysta Nagahori, has the country's largest floor space of 81,800 square meters, but this and the two others cannot be said to be 'cities.' The reason why the entire underground in the Umeda area appears to be an independent city is that it is equipped with everything -seven JR, private railway and subway stations (five of them having underground platforms), department stores, office buildings, hotels, banks, post offices, movie theaters, theaters, playrooms, restaurants, brand-commodity shops, major volume sales stores, convenience stores, drug stores, bookstores, travel agents, various kinds of schools and sundry shops.
In addition, there is a police box in the cheap eating and drinking place. At the park space, there are a small stream, a fountain and a flower bed. All metropolitan things lie in a mammoth underground space complicatedly linking more than two underground shopping centers and undergrounds of many high-rise buildings. Since people in Osaka are called 'kuidaore (extravagant on food),' the number of stores and their diversity at the underground shopping center may be Japan's top.
An average day schedule of a salaried man commuting to the Umeda area is as follows: Walking nearly 15 minutes in the area after leaving a ticket gate, entering underground and his office in a building, and starting to work. In the lunch time, he goes to an eating place about five minutes away from the office and returns after drinking a cup of coffee.
No inconvenience, no sense of incongruity
After 5 p.m., he goes to a cheap eating and drinking place with his friends or colleagues to grumble, and returns home by train lightly intoxicated. During these hours, he appears on the ground only when he is working at his office. Still, he feels no inconvenience or a sense of incongruity.
Compared with the Tokyo metropolitan area, Osaka's city center has a high rate of occupancy by underground shopping centers. As the population is concentrated in the limited Umeda area, the administration wants to utilize it three dimensionally to improve the entire area's flexibility and efficiency.
People in the Kansai region generally favor a living giving priority to convenience and utility, rather than to a fine appearance. This underground city is considerably comfortable as far as wind, rain, cold and heat are concerned. No umbrella is needed to say the least.
During a general election campaign, Umeda is a place where candidates can expect to have many listeners to their speeches like in Shibuya and Shinjuku in Tokyo, but no campaign vehicles can enter to the underground city. It is a rare quiet space where people are not exposed to noisy campaign speeches full of lies, thoughtless remarks and slanders.
Nevertheless, it is interesting that the outcome of an election is largely determined by how candidates can captivate people coming and going through the underground city. Content rather than appearance. This is not only for a living. It may an Kansai's advice to Nagatacho, the political center in Tokyo.(Tawara)