After visitors descend stairs winding 50 metres (164 feet) below ground, they emerge to an otherworldly sight: a cavernous, dimly lit space with towering pillars reminiscent of a temple in ancient Rome.
“The moment I stepped down the stairs and saw the entire space, I was astonished,” said Chen, a tourist who visited the location in Kasukabe, a city just north of Tokyo, in Japan’s Saitama prefecture.
The facility, one of the world’s largest underground stormwater discharge channels, has come to be described as an “underground shrine” by many.
The temple aesthetic comes from 59 towering pillars within the space, each measuring seven metres long, two metres wide and 18 metres high.
The facility took 13 years to build at a cost of more than US$1 billion. Photo: Getty Images
Officially known as the Metropolitan Outer Area Underground Discharge Channel, the facility is visually reminiscent of Istanbul’s ancient underground Basilica Cistern water reservoir.
AloJapan.com