It seems in the past the utility poles were always above ground and everyone is used to that, so there isn't much of a push to change that.

ISTR Fujifilm developed an image-processing filter that could remove power lines from photos. So that kind of solves the problem, doesn't it?

If they put the lines underground we'd have a hundred straight years of road construction, with half of that time spent digging up and patching the same spot day after day after day...

And they make excellent tourist attractions


http://www.shareimages.com/images/pi...yWmqU-pole.jpg

Greate find. :D

Hakodate, a great little town.

Hakodate should twin with Bellefontaine, Ohio:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...reteStreet.jpg

Shhh.... don't tell Abe about that. Actually, he lives a few hundred meters down road from my old place also on a side street to utility-pole-free Yamate dori. There is a police bus (I call them gaijin wagons) awkwardly parked on Yamate full of sleeping policemen in between shifts guarding the streets around his place. I guess he does not prefer to live in that beautiful residence, which is madness in my opinion.

Taro Aso also lives around there (Kamiyamacho on the Shoto border) and he had a police guard outside his Tudor style house (looks kind of crappy to me) and one of those anti-vehicle devices in front of the driveway. This guard was there while he was in opposition as the most recent LDP PM. Not sure if Abe had any guards at that time also being an ex-PM. They didn't have the police bus and the keisatsu deployed around side streets.

Aso's house is very close to the Tokyo police chief's house, which is guarded to the extreme. They even have a Koban (well, guard post) in front.