In our everyday life we often tend to overlook the small unimportant things. The same is true when we travel. We tend to keep our eyes wide open and focus on majestic buildings, beautiful sights, and amazing views of this new and amazing place we’re visiting. Especially Japan, with its beautiful temples, shrines and gardens has a lot to offer. Sometimes however, slowing down and actually looking down may reveal amazing and beautiful things as well.
Japan probably has the most amazing manhole covers in the world. Over 90% of Japanese municipalities have their own original manhole designs.
A quick Google search will reveal that in recent years a number of books have been published with pictures of the different manhole covers and that there is more than one national manhole fan club.
The funny thing is, that my Japanese wife, had never noticed the beautiful Japanese manhole designs until I mentioned it to her. Life’s quite interesting in that way, sometimes we tend to overlook beautiful things that are right beside (or below) us.