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The story
In the broadcast on the 7th of “Honma Dekka?! TV,” comedy duo EXIT’s Rintaro revealed that he thoroughly researched the neighborhood before buying his condo. The show featured an expert describing Tokyo Bay’s reclaimed land as “the safest in Tokyo.” This sparked backlash on 5ch’s Geinou/Sports News+ board, with posters citing the liquefaction damage Urayasu suffered during the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, while others countered that “it’s safe if built with modern construction techniques” and that “the condo building itself won’t collapse, but the surrounding roads and water systems will be knocked out” — fueling a broader debate over liquefaction countermeasures and the origins of place names.
Rintaro: Is his condo’s neighborhood the safest even in Tokyo? “I researched it like crazy” before buying
Comedy duo “EXIT” member Rintaro (40) appeared on Fuji TV’s “Honma Dekka?! TV” (Wednesdays, 9:00 PM), airing on the 7th, and revealed the neighborhood where he bought his home.
The theme of that episode was: “Why are there so many rainy days? Thoroughly unraveling the mystery behind Japan’s heavy rain anomalies!”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Don't let realtors scam you.
Remember what happened to Urayasu during the 2011 earthquake?
They say it's safe as long as it's properly built with modern construction techniques.
The countermeasures only cover his own building though.
Aren't the roads still at risk of having pipes pop up out of the ground, like in Urayasu?
An emeritus seismology professor said this years ago.
If the Tonankai earthquake hits,
Tokyo's coastal areas are completely finished.
There's no rescue force big enough to help those victims.
Even high-rise residents on the upper floors
might survive for a while,
but with infrastructure totally down,
the coastline will be sitting in seawater for at least two weeks.
Probably half the people there would die.
Huge crowds rush in and you literally can't move.
Haneda Airport and Yokohama's Minato Mirai really didn't liquefy even during the 2011 earthquake.
I wouldn't want to live right next to an airport though.
Apparently near the US military bases in Okinawa, military planes fly nonstop, and the vibrations make every day feel like a theme park ride.
Minato Mirai did liquefy though.
Re: #47
The area around Shin-Urayasu Station liquefied too.
If it's reclaimed land, it's just not gonna work.
Plus groundwater wells up in Tokyo, so Tokyo Station is literally chained down so it doesn't float.
it's not like the condo buildings fall over.
It's the detached houses that are screwed.
It's only the condo building itself that's fine — the surrounding ground gets all churned up by the liquefaction. Water service gets cut, and then there's no road left for the water tanker trucks to even drive on.
There's no housing inside the airport.
I'm talking about Haneda Airport itself.
The residential areas around Haneda probably don't have any real countermeasures at all.
Not much point talking about a place nobody actually lives in.
Basically, if you throw enough money at it, you're fine.
The parking lot liquefied though.
They probably compacted the ground rock-solid there.
They've got ponds and stuff, so without countermeasures the whole place would turn into a swamp fast.
Even within Tokyo, east of the Imperial Palace,
and south down to around Shinjuku,
would probably be wiped out entirely.
I used to live in Kiyosumi-Shirakawa and nothing happened there.
There's Kiyosumi Garden, a relic that survived both the Taisho-era earthquake and the WWII firebombing.
My family home was in Tsukishima too, by the way, and that miraculously escaped the bombing as well —
so even going into the Heisei era, there were tons of houses over 100 years old still standing there.
I still vividly remember Mejiro-dori and Eitai-dori during the 2011 earthquake —
everyone was just walking, trying to get home.
Looking at old maps helps a lot.
Also, place names related to water are a red flag.
"Umeda" too comes from "reclaimed rice field" —
though there are plenty of exceptions.
the scary part is earthquakes, quit playing dumb.
And there's inland flooding to worry about too lol
The population-to-resource ratio when city functions grind to a halt is going to be insane.
In the countryside, tens of thousands of meals and a few thousand bottles of water would cover it.
In Tokyo, that wouldn't even be enough for a single ward.
this is basically exactly what happens:
Places like Kanda will probably end up underwater.
Isn't the position of Kasumigaseki off though?
By the way, liquefaction can happen inland too —
you can tell from the liquefaction damage seen across the Kanto region during the 2011 earthquake.
That's outdated info.
The newest condos use ground-improvement construction methods for liquefaction countermeasures, so they're safe.
It's about driving the foundation piles down into the bedrock layer.
That's not it at all.
Come on, guys.
"The condo is fine" just means it won't collapse and kill you — water gets cut, gas stops, sewage backs up, and the roads are so wrecked that water trucks can't even get close, so hauling water is a nightmare.
If it liquefied from that, it'd be a joke.
It's well known that the planned site for Toyosu Market liquefied.
Liquefaction also depends on how long the shaking lasts, not just the intensity.
Minato Mirai was actually a lower-5 intensity.
Naka and Nishi wards hit a max of upper-5,
but Minato Mirai was only a 4?
LOL, if anything that means the ground there is too strong.
Well, the main concerns really are liquefaction or interior damage from long-period ground motion.
Buildings actually tilting just isn't realistic unless the piles are insufficient, like with that Yokohama condo case.
That's not right.
Let's get the facts straight.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Liquefaction of reclaimed land was widely observed along Tokyo Bay — including in Urayasu, Chiba Prefecture — during the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, and it’s known for causing more damage to detached houses and infrastructure like roads and sewers than to condominium buildings. Large modern condos have reduced collapse risk by driving piles down to solid bedrock or improving the ground itself, but problems like sunken surrounding roads or water trucks being unable to get through after a water outage remain a separate issue. In the thread, the “the building itself is safe” perspective and the “the neighborhood as a whole is safe” perspective talked past each other, fueling the debate. It’s also easy to overlook that posters cited wildly different seismic intensities for Minato Mirai — anywhere from 4 to upper-5 — a reminder that whether liquefaction occurs can’t be judged by intensity alone.
※This article is composed of excerpts and a summary from the 5ch (Geinou/Sports News+) thread “[Entertainment] EXIT’s Rintaro: Is his condo’s neighborhood the safest in Tokyo? He says he “researched it like crazy” before buying — expert claims Tokyo Bay’s reclaimed land is the safest.”
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