Images : Kyohei Sakaguchi
The Japanese are just better than the rest of us. There. I've said it. From consumer electronics to cars, it seems that the Japanese just do things better.
I'm sure we've all heard that the Japanese may be academically better (their school children consistently score at the top of the charts) but they're not creative. But that is dead wrong as anyone who has seen a Japanese game show, watched an anime, or play Super Mario can attest.
Even the Japanese homeless are better. In 2000, architect Kyohei Sakaguchi ran across this homeless camp along a riverside in Tokyo. The homeless man who was living in it worked for a camera company and knew his electronics - so he outfitted his "Zero Yen House" with a solar panel that let him watch TV and listen to the radio.
The Interior is made from wood. The roof is made from the cardboard. He covered it with a big blue vinyl sheet. He stocks under the floor. This house isn't connected with the road. He just put it on the road. He said to me that this could float on the water once. This house is also a ship!!!
Link - via anArchitecture
WHAT??? This is the measuring stick you want to use to determine "better"?
That's pretty high praise for a guy who stuck a solar panel on the side of a cardboard box and covered it with a blue tarp! Someone might huff and puff and blow his little cardboard shanty down.
I'll reserve my praise for people who use actual building materials.
"The homeless man who was living in it worked for a camera company and knew his electronics "
This is the return of the fucking man eating manchaster capitalism:
Workers in hightech jobs who can not afford real housing.
This is not inovativ! This is sad!
Except the funny thing is...a vast tract of people have these thoughts in private, they just don't want to articulate them in public for fear of the Intelligentsia's reaction. A group who espouse multiculturalism not due to any honest conscious belief in it as an ideology as an end in itself, but because their default mode is to believe society always needs to be in a state of flux.
In an age of mass deceit, speaking honestly is a revolutionary act.