Rebuilding in Japan

It's not clear from the photo what they've actually done. It's great that they're out there working, but you can't see if anything is fixed yet at all, since the portion of the road seen on the left is out of view in the photo on the right. Google translate helps on the original japanese site, but not the text on the photos. The site says "The Great Kanto branch pipe is the most damage, Naka Mito Joban IC ~ IC (up line) is. Are currently working diligently recovery."

I really doubt they took the effort to plant hedge bushes in the median so quickly.

I'm thinking what a non-Japanese guy like me thinks is the "after" picture is really the "before" picture.

It seems that the photo on the left is taken from the side of the road and the photo on the right is taken from what would be the middle of the road. It looks like they were able to save the leftmost lane and had to tear up the rest. The bushes look new as they have sandbags around them most likely for support while they take root. Also the hedges would help secure the ground underneath by creating a large root system.

I would like to believe it is true since there has been so many sad stories from Japan since the quake.

I had my friend at work roughly translate this for me:

The picture on the left was taken March 11 @ 4:30pm

Highway Mito to Nonsu (sp?), 150 meters destroyed

The picture on the right was taken March 15 @ 1:00pm

Fours days later, the debris has been removed and the have put small stones/paving down

If you look at the power line pole and the trees on the side of the road on the picture on the left, you will see them on the picture on the right, about 200 yards down the road. And on the side of the road down there you can see construction equipment. So I'm guessing they aren't done with anything, but simply getting started right away.

I was arguing the point that Japan is super efficient and how America's government allows our infrastructure to erode before doing anything about it.

you can drive on potholes, you can't drive on earthquake cracks. How perfect do you want your road and how much are you willing to pay for it?

And yet it is cheaper to surface coat the roads yearly than letting them pothole so badly it must be completely repaved. We're expects at saving a penny now so we can spend a dollar later. (See also healthcare, education vs incarceration, and our piss-poor rail and energy infrastructures.)

And to think I just came here to marvel that those clever Japanese went from fall to green foliage in three days.

Kanto branch NEXCO East (Taito), the highway about the damage caused by the earthquake that occurred off the northeastern Pacific Ocean 46 minutes at 14:00 on March 11, 2011, emergency response headquarters in the Kanto Kanto branch offices (Headquarters : Hazime Makoto Ishikawa, Regional Director) launched simultaneously with the further confirmation of disaster situation, we are working to give the best to restore damaged areas.

The northeast branch pipe information will be posted on our website so, please visit there

Emergency and transport routes, emergency vehicles and personnel necessary to carry materials such as emergency disaster measures (which issued the Prefectural Public Safety Commission and the prefectural governor or the designated emergency vehicle equipped with red light "check mark passing emergency vehicles" Vehicles are posted) to secure transport routes, the roads specified by the Public Safety Commission. In the general section of the target vehicle Please note that not all traffic.
3. Closure of the rest area
Tomobe Joban Expressway service areas (vertical), Kasama road parking area Kanto (eastbound, westbound), the damage has occurred due to the earthquake by building water and repair after termination of the mainline freeway closure Until the close the rest area. Customers are great, but the inconvenience, please understand.

4. Status and restoration of roads damaged
The Great Kanto branch pipe is the most damage, Naka Mito Joban IC ~ IC (up line) is. Are currently working diligently recovery.


5. Passage of emergency vehicles
March 19 (Sat) Oota Kiryuu Kanto Expressway scheduled to open in time between the 15 IC ? IC Sano Tanuma, the situation is usually even more crowded and the relationship between disaster recovery that parallels Route 50 Yes, if requested by the emergency vehicle traffic, and I can travel to.

The grid part of the article talks about road closures...I could not copy the captions under the pictures...Google Translate is really useful!

Someone else has a better system of doing things than we do? INCONCEIVABLE!

Wow, our councils in the UK could learn a thing or two from the Japanese. That's brilliant.

Alex:

I know! INCONCEIVABLE! (sic)! Isn't it amazing how they turned autumn into spring just like that!

If you are interested in buying some swampland in Louisiana which would be perfect for building condos on, let me know!

how did the earthquake know how to split the road along the white line?

I am reminded of Tsutomu Yamaguchi, a man who survived two atomic bombs in Japan. He watched the Hiroshima blast, and then returned to Nagasaki to go back to work. The part of his story that is relevant is that he took the train out of Hiroshima - the next day. That's right, the trains of Hiroshima were running the next day.

This photo addresses the situation in a concise, abeit somewhat vulgar, manner -

http://i.imgur.com/qxCwb.jpg

I think the after image is taken further up the road. if up you use the power line pole as Schrobblehead pointed out.

You people can't adjust for perspective in photos very well. All these photos show is a road crew preparing to repair a road three and a half days after a disaster. Are you mistaking the road that was not messed up with the one that has yet to be repaired (left vs right side of the photo on the 15th)?
And how is this unlike the US? Where I'm from, we have hurricanes, not earthquakes and tsunamis, but, among other destruction, the roads get washed away - resulting in the same effect seen here: a totally demolished road (in no way am I minimizing the disaster in Japan, just saying the road damage in this example is comparable to what I've grown up with). The road crews always start the next available day; as there is no use in repairing a road during 150 MPH winds, they do wait until the storm is over. I won't go so far as to say that this Japanese road crew is slow, because there was a fucking disaster to deal with first, but it did take them three days to get there. I would imagine there actually were repairs being made on their roads on the first day, as would be normal and to be expected in a first-world nation.
Have none of you been in a disaster in the US? Again, where I'm from, the road crews actually prepare their response, since they've done this before, and need to be out on day one. Since Japan also has severe weather, including regular earthquakes, I'm sure their road crews do the same. Aside from the debacle that was Katrina, the US usually responds very well. How fortunate for you if you've never been in a disaster to observe this.

@ Dirk - I think what most people are disagreeing over is the image on the right is not the same exact spot as the one on the left. So it appears that they have completed the damaged road.

Just a note on pot-holes. One of my acquaintances is an ex-cop who responded to several motor vehicle accidents. Somewhere around a third of all his stories involve a pot-hole or cut-out section of pavement. At higher-than-normal speeds, the pot-holes rip the front axle off or split the frame and very often kills anyone in the vehicle as pieces of metal fly through the windshield. In one case, a surgeon racing between surgies at 200KMPH drove over a cut-out of pavement and disintigrated his car and himself. Not to mention normal wear and tear. Watch out for those pot-holes.

The pictures are authentic.

If you look with some atention to detail, will realize that the one at left is a sub-set of the one on the right; namely the photo on the left is on the first quadrant on the one on the right.
The picture on the left is the up corner by the right side of the photo on the right.

It's really amazing, but we can see that the work is not all done, yet, but it's still amazing, specially when in this banana country Brasil we have to wait years for something like that to be done.

É, a nossa sociedade(humana) pode muito mais do que parece, se nós quiséssemos, não haveria mais fome, nem lamento, só um todo. Nesse dia não seriam apenas estradas pra resolver um problema emergencial e sim constantes atitudes para resolver em definitivo, as questões globais.

NOW the road is fixed -

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/03/23/article-1369307-0B4B564300000578-813_634x950.jpg