A major event in Fukuoka history has been sadly, slowly and extremely quietly unfolding on the western fringes of the city. It is a sad little story that doesn't seem to have entered the English speaking part of the internet yet, so I thought I'd let this blog post fill in the gap. My homage to the short and tragic life of Sky Dream Fukuoka.
Sky Dream Fukuoka opened in 2001 to much fanfare. Well, at least I assume there was a lot of fanfare, I wasn't actually there. At 120 metres it was the largest Ferris wheel in all of Japan. That is saying something, as Japan is a country dotted with mammoth Ferris wheels, many of which at one point or another in their history could claim to be the largest in the world.
The gondolas were air conditioned and moved so slowly that it took 20 minutes to complete a single revolution. As a 2007
New York Times article noted:
"The 394-foot Sky Dream Fukuoka in Japan even advertises this lazy pace as a selling point — it helps ensure “maximum kissing time.”
It was built in an odd location, at the then recently opened Marinoa City Fukuoka, a shopping mall in the western suburbs of Fukuoka. I say "odd" because this location put it right next to the SkyWheel Ferris wheel, which at 58.3 metres was a fairly sizable one in its own right.
This created one of Fukuoka's more interesting sights, two massive Ferris wheels built right next to each other. This is what they looked like from the ferry to Nokonoshima:
They could be seen from miles away and, lit up at night, dominated the city's western skyline. As the
Japanese Wikipedia entry notes, this unusual sight became one of the city's more prominent landmarks and they became known as Fukuoka's "twin Ferris wheels."
It goes without saying, of course, that while it makes for an interesting sight, putting two massive Ferris wheels right next to each other like this is perhaps not an economically sound idea. Nor is placing it way out in the suburbs at a mall with no rail access. Despite this, passenger numbers were enough for it to be operated in the black.
The end, however, came swiftly two years ago. The story in the news as I remember it is that the wheel needed some to have some very expensive maintenance work performed in order to keep it in operation. Its owners, the Evergreen Group, decided that the cost of these and a projected decline in passenger numbers would make the wheel economically un-viable and decided to permanently close it instead. On September 26, 2009 Sky Dream Fukuoka carried its last passengers, less than 8 years after it had carried its first.
One of the things I regret in life is that I passed up the chance to take a ride on this wheel. Ena and I made our first visit to Marinoa in August of 2009. We wanted to take a ride on the thing just to say we had ridden the biggest (we've been on other big wheels in Yokohama and Kobe before), but were a bit pressed for time that day (it was actually our anniversary) and decided that we would just do it the next time we visited. We had no idea that a month later the thing would be permanently shuttered.
This is a picture I took on that day:
This is a picture I took yesterday from roughly the same spot:
The thing sat silently for at least a year after its closure, but last summer work commenced on dismantling it and by now it looks close to half finished. It has been sold to a Taiwanese investor and, once they have re-constructed it there, that country will have a Ferris wheel larger than any in all of Japan (and the 9th largest in the world).
Its kind of a sad story. This thing was only 8 years old when it closed - that is barely more than half the life expectancy of a chihuahua. Its entire existence from birth to death fit neatly within the confines of the fledgling 21st century, which must be a first for a structure of this magnitude.
Workers were busy at work taking the thing down piece by piece as we visited. It is a massive operation, it looks just as difficult as it must have been to build it in the first place.
Nearby its smaller twin rotates in somber silence, mourning the loss of its big brother:
Ena and I had ice cream under the little one (literally):
We had to wonder if this one's days aren't numbered also. In the 15 minutes we were there not a single customer appeared. One by one the lonely little gondolas arced skyward, empty. It was a Monday though and the mall wasn't too busy, perhaps on the weekend it'll get more business. We thought of going up, but it seemed like it would have been a sorry substitute for the big one we sorely wished we had ridden when we had the chance. And the 500 yen price for what looked like a 3 minute or so ride seemed a bit steep.
Anyway, that is the abbreviated story of Sky Dream Fukuoka. Its fall from grace is no better exemplified than this photo from Fukuoka's official tourist website which has completely airbrushed it out of existence:
Like Trotsky, it was never there. Just a figment of our imaginations.
Postscript July 8, 2011
Yesterday I turned on the 9 o'clock NHK national news and their lead story was about this very Ferris wheel. The remainder of it collapsed suddenly while the disassembly work was underway. 2 cranes went down with it, and together they flattened a number of cars and did some damage to the building.
Pictures of the damage and story (in Japanese) are available
here.
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This thing is in my living room now. He showed up today. Looks like we'll be keeping him.
Otherwise we know very little about him.
Haven't decided on a name yet. It'll be something cute, probably.
A major event in Fukuoka history has been sadly, slowly and extremely quietly unfolding on the western fringes of the city. It is a sad little story that doesn't seem to have entered the English speaking part of the internet yet, so I thought I'd let this blog post fill in the gap. My homage to the short and tragic life of Sky Dream Fukuoka.
They could be seen from miles away and, lit up at night, dominated the city's western skyline. As the Japanese Wikipedia entry notes, this unusual sight became one of the city's more prominent landmarks and they became known as Fukuoka's "twin Ferris wheels."
This is a picture I took yesterday from roughly the same spot:
The thing sat silently for at least a year after its closure, but last summer work commenced on dismantling it and by now it looks close to half finished. It has been sold to a Taiwanese investor and, once they have re-constructed it there, that country will have a Ferris wheel larger than any in all of Japan (and the 9th largest in the world).
Its kind of a sad story. This thing was only 8 years old when it closed - that is barely more than half the life expectancy of a chihuahua. Its entire existence from birth to death fit neatly within the confines of the fledgling 21st century, which must be a first for a structure of this magnitude.
Workers were busy at work taking the thing down piece by piece as we visited. It is a massive operation, it looks just as difficult as it must have been to build it in the first place.
Ena and I had ice cream under the little one (literally):
We had to wonder if this one's days aren't numbered also. In the 15 minutes we were there not a single customer appeared. One by one the lonely little gondolas arced skyward, empty. It was a Monday though and the mall wasn't too busy, perhaps on the weekend it'll get more business. We thought of going up, but it seemed like it would have been a sorry substitute for the big one we sorely wished we had ridden when we had the chance. And the 500 yen price for what looked like a 3 minute or so ride seemed a bit steep.
Like Trotsky, it was never there. Just a figment of our imaginations.
The Japanese baseball season started a couple of weeks late this year due to the tsunami. The Rakuten Eagles play in Sendai and their stadium was severely damaged so they've had to juggle the schedules around quite a bit to enable Rakuten to play on the road while repairs are made.
Due to my general fear of change I view this as a good thing.
Well, the bags and cards look the same, but when I first started collecting these things they only put one card in the bag. They started putting 2 in a couple years ago. This development didn't help me get any closer to collecting a whole set. In fact, it just made me buy less of them as they jacked the price per bag all the way up to 88 yen.
That is it. You would need to eat several hundred bags of plain chips over the course of a single baseball season to have a realistic shot at collecting the whole set. Hence my failure to ever come close to accomplishing that goal. They are fine every once in a while but its still April and I'm tired of the things already. Sour cream and onion would be nice every once in a while.
On the afternoon of our last day in Kyoto we headed over to the Philosopher's Path ("Tetsugaku no Michi") which leads to the Nanzenji temple. This is literally just a cherry tree-lined path that winds its way along a canal (more of a ditch) for a couple kilometres.
We had some "sakura" ice cream sold from a vendor with an ice chest strapped to the back of her bicycle, which I thought was a pretty cool way to run a business:
All in all it was a pleasant walk. If you are in the area, a walk down the Philosopher's path is a great way of getting from Ginkakuji to the vicinity of Nanzenji. If you aren't in the area, I wouldn't really recommend going out of your way to see it though!
Ena and I had a seat on the ledge of this gateway and realized that inevitably any trip we ever take to Kyoto at some point involves us sitting on the gateway to Nanzenji, looking at the maple trees. Its a long tradition dating back to my parent's first visit to Japan way back when and continuing up to the present. Its just a nice place to sit. If memory serves the film "Lost in Translation" even has one of those moody, reflective scenes with Scarlett Johansson at the gate to Nanzenji. But we were there first. She is such a poser, that Scarlett Johansson. I don't remember if she was sitting down in that scene or not.
This time, for the first time, we decided to actually enter the paid-entry part of the temple. There are actually 3 different areas that you have to pay 3 different entrance fees for, so we only opted for the most expensive one - the Hojo garden.
I have to say that it was a bit of a letdown though. The free parts of the Nanzenji temple are so impressive that I was probably expecting the paid parts to totally blow me away, which they inevitably failed to do. They were nice though.
Visiting the Nanzenji was a bit of a bitter-sweet experience though, as we knew it was the last place we had time to visit and would have to bring our fun-filled trip to an end. I have to say that this was probably the best trip we've ever had. It was one of those trips where even when stuff didn't work out (like our arriving too late to see Hiei zan) we just laughed it off. Nothing could spoil the enjoyment we were having. We were lucky with the weather too as it didn't rain at all, which helped a lot!
So we headed off back through the gates of the Nanzenji, sad in the knowledge that our trip was at an end, but happy in the knowledge that we had been able to have such a nice time in our four days and once again promising each other that we'd visit again someday.
On 3 of the 4 days we spent in Kyoto, we got around on rental bicycles. For those of you planning a trip to Kyoto, bicycles are a great way to see the city. It is flat, compact and has plenty of cycling paths (like the one on the Kamogawa) and wide sidewalks (on which you can ride bikes in Japan), so it is quite safe and pleasant if the weather holds out.
The staff are quite friendly. They provide a very useful 24 page Kyoto cycling map with each rental. The map is in Japanese, though the main page has the bigger sites written in English as well.
Our last day in Kyoto was sunny and warm. We had until 8PM until our bus would whisk us back to Fukuoka, so once again we set out to explore some of the remaining sites we had not yet hit on rented bicycles.
There is a little villa in a garden you can see, it used to be the residence of a retainer back in the old days:
After that we pedaled over to Higashiyama, stopping at the Eikando. The Eikando is a decent temple with a very lovely little garden tucked in a courtyard that looks different from different sides. If you are a garden lover I recommend coming to Kyoto a couple weeks later than we did, these places must look amazing with all the leaves open:
They've decorated the temple buildings with these colorful curtains which just scream "Eikando":
You can climb up the hill to a little pagoda halfway up. Its got a nice view of the city from up there. It looks better photographed from a distance though:
Our Kyoto trip continues in the next post!
On our third night we walked over from the hotel to Yasaka Jinja in the Gion area. Its an interesting place at night, overlooking the bustle of Gion:
The gate is bright orange and white:
Large stones make for an attractive path to the centre of the Shrine. The lanterns bring it to life after dark::
Nearby in Maruyama Koen the spring splendor of the giant weeping cherry tree is fully lit:
On the street in front of the shrine we spot a Maiko san heading off to an evening appointment and looking somewhat out of place in the modern surroundings:
Around the corner though is the Gion district's main entertainment district for the well to do, a fitting destination for her:
After watching her duck discreetly into a doorway, we headed back to our hotel and called it a night.
Continued in the next post.
