Night Moves

Posted by Mike Cash (Kiryu, Japan) on 5 April 2007 in Transportation.

Inside the A1 Container yard at Tokyo's Aomi wharf. The check-in line closes at 4:30 p.m. but on some days there are still 100 or more trucks waiting in line and it may be between 7 and 8 p.m. before they've all been taken care of.

On days like these, which aren't at all rare, trucks rapidly fill up two staging yards and the line goes out into the street, reaches up to the fashionable Odaiba tourist/business area, loops back into the wharf area, and often makes a second loop around, totally snarling traffic and making the whole area a virtual Sargasso Sea of unmoving vehicles.

It isn't unusual to spend 3 or more hours in line for the 5 seconds that it takes for the crane to load or unload a container.

VFXY Photos