Now we live about a 15 minute bicycle ride and three bridges east of there, and looking out our window on the 10th floor we look down on the Sumida Shipyard.
Well, you couldn't build ships here, because the bridges are too low. But, these smaller craft are built from steel like the larger vessels. The big gray barge to the right was a recent project.
With those big props, this looked like a tugboat, and there are plenty of them around here. But, in time it became clear this was something completely different.
This is the "Kachidoki" (the name of a neighbourhood just north of Harumi), a brand new fireboat.
Incidentally, the slogan over the door reads in Japanese and English, "We love the human being, the sea and the ship" Maybe it loses something in translation...
Tokyo has large fireboats, but some low profile ones like this with towers that can fold down, so they can go under bridges and through the network of canals in this area to fight fires close to the water. With the long history of devastating fires and constant threat of earthquakes, the Tokyo Fire Department has a budget that could probably run some small countries. They have a fleet of at least a dozen helicopters, and several dozen fireboats.
