Last summer, when we vacationed in Japan, we came across a place in Tokyo that had this mindblowing origami castle. The official name of the origami work is called A Castle On the Ocean or 海の上のお城. I found out later that the paper castle was created by Wataru Itou (伊藤航), a young student of a major art university studying in Tokyo. It took him 4 years to make and he said he made it out of boredom.
-Sigh- This is one of those moments where my mom would yell at me and ask why I couldn’t be more like him. :/
I don’t usually take photos, but since the castle was so purdy, I just had to.
There’s itty bitty lights and a moving train…and it’s all made of paper. Wow.
Castle On the Ocean is located on the Trans-Tokyo Bay Highway (the highway that stretches across Tokyo Bay). The highway connects Tokyo City and Chiba Prefecture but half of it is visible from a birds eye view and the other half isn’t. The section that isn’t visible continues as an underwater tower. It’s the longest underwater tunnel in the world. Overall, it has an overall length of 14 km, it includes a 4.4 km bridge and 9.6 km tunnel underneath the bay. If you ever plan on traveling along that highway, you might want to reconsider. Since the construction of the Aqua-Line took 31 years to complete (opened in 1997), and ¥1.44 trillion (about $11.2 billion USD) to build, the toll for a single trip is ¥3000 (about $32.86USD) for ordinary-size cars. Yeah. I’m cheap. I ain’t paying for that. Thankfully, my parents did. Okay! I’m almost done talking. So somewhere along the highway, there’s a pit stop. This pit stop is man-made island called Umihotaru. It holds cafés, restaurants, amusement-like facilities, a deck for sightseeing, parking lots. And somewhere within it all is the Castle On the Ocean.
Here are some pictures of what Umihotaru looks like~
It kind of looks like a ship, right?
