It exists under Route 16, which is the most famous and most congested beltway in the metropolitan area. I went there in the summer of 2011. It is a huge underground canal that can keep rainwater from overflowing the rivers around Kasukabe when heavy rain is falling. Kasukabe citizens were having a lot of trouble with flooding until this reservoir was made in 2006. Of course, it was a public-work project, so the canal is managed by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. This was why we could visit it only on the weekdays at that time. It sounds like a really bureaucratic routine, doesn’t it? I took a day off on a Wednesday and went to Kasukabe for the tour of the facility on my Yamaha.
The tour started from a lecture about the facility with a diorama of this area. After the lecture, we passed into the entrance of the underground temple and went down the five-story stairs to deep inside the canal. Usually, the canal is empty and we can look around the very bottom of the reservoir, which features many stone pillars. It was really like a Hellenistic temple because of its forest of pillars in a dark space. I couldn’t believe that there was such a sacred place under Route 16. Unfortunately, we could move around only within a ten-meter square because a thick layer of mud covered the ground of the temple. It was ten minutes that we were allowed to stay there before we turned back to the entrance.
Now, in 2020, the tour system has become friendlier than before. You can enjoy the canal tour on the weekend with a reservation and an entrance fee. Additionally, the public corporation gives you some optional tours which includes a field trip to the pumping machine facility with a jet turbine engine! Here is the website of the canal.
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