Via BoingBoing, The G-Cans Project is a massive project, begun 12 years ago, to build infrastructure for preventing overflow of the major rivers and waterways spidering the city... The site is all in Japanese, but if you click around the menus a bit, there are animations and diagrams of how the system works, and other interesting photos of the high-tech control center and turbine facilities. Supposedly the G-Cans project is also meant to be a tourist attraction, and can be visited for free.
Incredible photos. 2001: A Space Odyssey meets Doom (minus the monsters). Even the system diagrams are artful, reminiscent of a Royksopp video.
