Exploring Deep Underground Japan
Given that I'm basically living on Japan's time zone. If I ever decided to stream something like games or other things, my de facto audience would be those in Japan, or time zones approximating it. It made me think, if I was going to explain my unique hours, maybe I could go the Mystery Science Theater 3000 route and explain it with something silly like:
INT: THE FROGLAB
SUPER: Somewhere in Japan, deep underground...
Which got me thinking, what actually is deep underground in Japan?
Japan's Deep Underground Law
Curiously, the first result when searching for "Deep Underground Japan" is a Wikipedia article for Japan's Deep underground Law.
Deep underground (大深度地下, dai-shindo chika) is a Japanese concept for the public use of deep underground, enabled by a 2001 law. It was first thought of in the late 1980s as Japan faced ever-increasing land values in the economic bubble, to allow the use of heretofore-unused deep underground for necessary water and utility ducts and other city tunnels.
It's an interesting concept, the idea that as long as something is sufficiently deep enough underground, it effectively exists in its own space and no compensation to landowners is required. Reminds me a little bit of The Underground in Pokémon Diamon and Pearl, a place that exists just about on its own underneath the regular world.
So, was anything built based on that law? Curiously, the Wikipedia page seems to think that no projects using deep underground have been completed as of 2010. Given its sparse layout and older dates, it seems like it might be an older article.
(Pressure control water tank)
This is probably the most well-known underground infrastructure project in Japan, a popular regurgitated topic on Reddit. It's also something I first saw referenced in the original Mirror's Edge as the Storm Drains level.
(Mirror's Edge Storm Drains Level)
Based on other photos, despite the Pressure Control Water Tank being the most typically shown location, it seems that the tank is more just one location in a larger set of infrastructure. It's possible that there would be a place to stage a "secret lab", perhaps in a control room, but it seems more like a water infrastructure thing than a place you could imagine a certain Frog having Internet access.
The deepest train station in Japan, 486 steps and 70 m underground. Cool location, but more of a passageway than the kind of thing you could imagine office space in.
(Super-Kamiokande Neutrino Observatory Detection Chamber)
Curiously, Kamioka Observatory is another one I've heard of, from an analysis video I saw quite some time ago about a chain reaction failure in their Super-Kamiokande neutrino observatory. I think that's the video that made me decide to subscribe to Alexander the ok, a self-described "engineer turned data scientist" who makes pretty good videos about things like rocket control systems and engineering incidents.
Now, this sounds like an ideal location for a fictitious mini laboratory in the depths! I found a blog post with some of the best photos I've ever seen of the inside.
The overall blog seems excellent too, Offbeat Japan, a wonderfully organized and excellently photographed collection of locations and seasons. I highly recommend checking it out!
Anyway, back to the lab. It has everything:
An old mine tunnel entrance:
And, of course, seafoam green control rooms. (See also "Why So Many Control Rooms Were Seafoam Green" by Beth Mathews)
Surrounded by Shimmering Detectors, this would be a fun setting for a secret laboratory.
There are other blogs describing visits to this laboratory also. It certainly looks like somewhere I'd love to visit someday!
More images of the layout can be found on the T2K Experiment website .
(Event Display of the Super-Kamiokande Detector)
Kamioka Gravitational Wave Detector
There doesn't seem to be a lot of information on Wikipedia about this place, but the one photo included in the article seems pretty neat.
Part of the currently in-construction KAGRA gravitational-wave detector. The foreground shows the vacuum tube for one of the laser-interferometer arms. The backgrounds shows where a mirror will be suspended from the room above. The detector is situated underground, in part of the old Kamioka Mine.
Attached to the image attribution is a link to Christopher's website. A few interesting reads to be found there!
Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (MINOS)
I'll conclude with one more location, one not in Japan but in the United States. It's striking to me for the contrast of industrial design with a mural in the area just outside the control room.
(Front face of the MINOS far detector)
The MINOS mural is something that ties together how I feel about some of these particle physics labs. I like how, even though these places and equipment are designed for a specific function, there's still a feeling of art within the photos I see. I'm particularly struck by the Kamioka Observatory as well, the golden photomultiplier tubes seem like they would be just as at home in an art installation as they are in the detection chamber.
The scale of these locations is another equally unignorable factor in what makes them so awe-inspiring to me. Just as circuit wafers are a world of microscopic cities and networks to me, so also are these megastructure large-scale experiment projects. They all possess a level of scale and complexity that I imagine would render them seemingly incomprehensible in their entirety to just one person, instead requiring a coordinated effort across multiple people to be brought to reality. I think that's pretty neat!
