MANHOLE ART

Recently I discovered a delightful art form! Every town or city in Japan has its own specially designed manhole covers. Sometimes they are just designs, but oftens they are pictures that represent something about the area. For example, in Shiga Prefecture Shin-Asahi features a windmill on its manhole covers, while Omi-Hachiman features a picture of its famous canal area, and Moriyama features a firefly (although it took me a while to figure out what it was.). Many other the Shiga Prefecture manhole covers have birds and flowers which is very appropriate for an area so rich in natural beauty and wildlife. 
Occasionally I also saw beautiful drain covers. My favorite ones were in Nagahama. Most of the manhole covers I saw were unpainted, but Remo Camerota has photographed a collection of beautifully painted covers and published them in his new book Drainspotting, which received  a 'Best Art Book' award at the NY Book Festival.
I photographed a great many manhole covers on my recent bicycle trip around Lake Biwa, so I decided to create a Flickr Photo Album. There are already a number of Flickr Groups that collect manhole cover photos. If you're interested, see Manhole Cover and Manhole Covers Around the World.

I don't remember ever noticing manhole covers back home in New Zealand, but I think that if we had such a variety of different designs in a relatively small area the way Japan does, there would be some practical jokers who drove around in the middle of the night and mixed them all up. Luckily Japanese young people don't seem to go in for stupid practical jokes the way Kiwis do!

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