Infrastructure in Japan is up to world standards in most areas, and in terms of public transportation it often surpasses those standards — but there's one field it falls way behind: utility poles and overhead cables that carry electrical power and telecommunications.
In London, Paris and Hong Kong, all utility cables are placed underground. In Taipei, 95 percent of the cables are buried. In Seoul, 46 percent. In Tokyo, however, only 7 percent are hidden below ground in the metropolis' 23 wards. In Osaka, it's 5 percent. For Japan as a whole, only 1 percent of cables are underground.
This is a special problem for a disaster-prone country like Japan, which also has characteristically narrow streets. Fallen poles and cables make it very difficult for emergency vehicles to reach victims. About 50,000 poles fell down during the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, and 8,000 during the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995. A 2003 typhoon that hit Miyakojima, Okinawa, felled 800 poles and a tornado damaged 46 in Koshigaya, Saitama Prefecture, in 2013.