Art Manhole at your feet!
As you walk around the city, you will see various manholes on the road. You will also discover highly designed items with symbols and famous places of the city. There is also a manhole card that tickles the collector's soul with a manhole cover as a card. Unfortunately, there is no manhole card with the Chuo-ku chapter, but if you visit the facilities of the Sewerage Bureau in Tokyo, you can get the following manhole cards in Tokyo 23 wards free of charge.
By the way, this card is "Kuramae Water House" (2-1-8 Kuramae, Taito-ku, Northern Sewerage Office TEL： It will be distributed free of charge to facility visitors at 03-3241-0944). Reservations are required for the tour, and please make a reservation at least one week in advance.
There are various manholes such as water and sewage, telephone, electricity, fire department, so why not walk down thinking of a "manhole cover" and walking down?
1. Manhole cover
There are currently two types of manhole materials: FC (cast iron) and FCD (FCD has been added to what is called ductile or spherical graphite cast iron). For manholes of less than 14 tons on the premises, a material called FC200 is used, and FCD500 is often used for 20 tons of on-site manholes. In the groundman hall for roads, the lid is FCD700 and the frame is FCD600.
Before cast iron or spherical graphite cast iron manhole cover, some lids were concrete and formwork FC. The number is small, but you can still see it.
2. Manhole with Tokyo Chapter
I walked around Nihonbashi, Ginza, and Tsukiji, but more than 90% were with the Tokyo Metropolitan Chapter, and the design was a manhole for sewerage based on cherry blossoms. Tokyo's flower "Yoshino cherry tree", tree "Ginkgo" and bird "Ulikagu" are designed. The Yoshino cherry tree is large in the center, with ginkgo leaves between the petals, 13 seagulls depicting them.
You can also see manholes for fire hydrants designed with fire engines (with metropolitan emblem) and manholes of the Tokyo Metropolitan Transportation Bureau near the intersection with a signal control mechanism.
3. Manhole cover decorating trees and flowers in Chuo-ku:
To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the central ward system, "Yanagi" and "Azalea" were enacted in 1987 as trees and flowers of the ward. To commemorate this, the colorful manhole cover installed in Chuo-ku stands out. This manhole is on a declining trend, and it was said that it was about 2 to 3 years ago behind Ginza 4-chome Wakoura and 5-chome Hatoido, but as far as I saw the other day, this manhole was removed. This is an introduction to this manhole cover near the Bank of Japan (2-1-1-1 Nihonbashi Motoishicho). Willows are entangled in the azalea. It's valuable. Since there is the letter "light", it is a manhole where electric wires for streetlights are located.
The photo of the sidewalk looks toward Kanda, and the left is the Bank of Japan.
Although it is not colorful, I found a manhole (human hole) with the Chuo-ku chapter near Fukutoku Shrine (Nihonbashimuromachi).
The cherry blossoms are scattered, but the manholes do not disappear. Please enjoy it.
