2015-05-11: Manhole Covers Pt.2

Manhole Covers! Mildly Interesting!

Bird with flowers, kind of pretty.

For some reason the raised kanji never looks as cool as carved kanji.

I am not sure what the regional famous things are for Ibaraki City. Ibaraki Prefecture is half the country away and is famous for melons. I guess a bird for the city.

Worst Marketing Choice Ever

Kyoto seems to be using Ninjas as their advertising item of choice. I have an issue with this. If you go to Kyoto and see the ninjas then they aren't really ninjas of the quality I have come to desire. If you can't see them and the Kyoto council tells you "See how good they are" my mistrust of politicians would lead me to believe they don't even have any. I just don't see how they will win with this campaign.


In Melbourne Australia the council has decided to use graffiti as part of their tourism campaign. Instead of running around cleaning it up all the time they dedicated alleys to graffiti and just go in once a year or so and paint over the top so it is ready for a fresh batch.

I am okay with the idea. It does mean graffiti people have a place to do their thing with less annoyance to people that don't like graffiti. It reduces the unnecessary friction in the world.
However I don't find the graffiti as interesting as the stuff which is done illegally. Somehow in my screwed up aesthetics the knowledge that the work was done at night in a hurry by guys who were ready to run at a moments notice makes it interesting. When it is sanctioned it is just pretty colours.

Somehow this screwed up aesthetic judgement system has decided that this manhole cover is not cool. A 6 part picture which has a back story and everything should seem cool to me. All the other ones are made by the council too. All the other ones are a deliberate attempt to be interesting too.

But this one feels like it is trying too hard I guess.