Japan Landowners Must Sell to Airport (Narita)

The Associated Press via the Houston Chronicle ^ | June 28, 2006, 12:53PM | KOZO MIZOGUCHI

[Paleo Conservative]

If you want on or off my aerospace ping list, please contact me by Freep mail.

[samtheman]

did they get a friend-of-the-court brief from Souter?

[Lazamataz]

First with the airport.

Then comes the nuclear testing.

Next thing you know: GODZIRRA!!!!

[Neidermeyer]

Narita truly needs the land , this is a very appropriate use of eminant domain... I regret that I never flew the "checkerboard" approach into HK.

[antiRepublicrat]

Narita truly needs the land , this is a very appropriate use of eminant domain..

But the price sounds low. Is there any occupied land near a city in Japan going for only $80K an acre?

[Zuben Elgenubi]

Airport officials have repeatedly pressed the government to allow a longer runway to accommodate jumbo jets, after dropping plans for a 8,202-foot runway when farmers and other residents refused to give up land needed for the project.

I flew from Tokyo to Seoul this April on a Korean Air 747 which is certainly a jumbo

[RightWhale]

judge Makoto Hasegawa asked Narita International Corp. to pay a total of 2.55 million yen ($22,000) to compensate the landowners

Seems the land has been taken by eminent domain for the corporation--done. Can the (former) owners contest the amount of compensation at this point?

[steveegg]

Oh no, they say he's got to go
Go, go Godzilla!
Oh no, there goes Tokyo
Go, go Godzilla!

[USNBandit]

the 12 landowners to sell six plots totaling 1,116 square yards _ less than a quarter acre

Look at the size of the lot these people own. It totals less than a quarter acre. These 12 aren't landowners, they are protesters. The same thing happened in Okinawa where protesters bought square meter parcels to block use by the American military.

[TheOracleAtLilac]

IIRC, there's a little scrap of hold out land surrounded by the airport expansion & has been that way since the 2nd runway was added. It's more of a nuisance to further expansion

[DTogo]

Wow, Narita without protesting farmers would be like Tokyo without the Far Right Wing speaker trucks hailing the Emperor.

Japan * ping * (kono risuto ni hairitai ka detai wo shirasete kudasai : let me know if you want on or off this list)

[Vigilanteman]

Nartia airport is roughly 50 miles from downtown Tokyo, so it isn't exactly cosmopolitan. Further, the land is not even a continuous parcel-- just little plots bought here and there so the protestors could drag this thing out as long as possible.

I lived in Japan when these protestors were offered roughly 10 times for the same amount of land. However, then as now, they weren't interested in selling, only in protesting.

If Tokyo had it to do all over again, they would probably have done what Osaka did-- build the airport on a manmade island in the bay. Expensive construction costs, but low legal costs.

[GATOR NAVY]

These 12 aren't landowners, they are protesters.

Excellent point.

[Billthedrill]

Yeppers - another ex-expat here. There are family plots near Narita where you can see a guy using hand machinery to actually farm a piece of land the size of my garage. Those would be the guys you'd see on TV. The ones you didn't see so much were the anarchists with the fire-bombs.

Remember these guys?

[GATOR NAVY]

"The total cost of Kansai Airport so far is $15 billion, which is 40% over budget (mostly due the problem of the island sinking). The airport is still deeply in debt, losing $560 million in interest every year. Airlines have been kept away by high landing fees (approximately $7500 for a Boeing 747), the second most expensive in the world after Narita's. Partly because of these and other problems, the airport is often referred as being a white elephant. Nowadays, after deep discounts, the number of flights is increasing."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansai_International_Airport

[USNBandit]

Do you know about the group in Okinawa basically doing the same thing? They were very active in the 90's when I was stationed in Atsugi. They had cherry picked land to buy that was on American military bases and once a year would lead a protest march demanding to "use" their property.

[UNGN]

I stayed in Narita for a week working with JAL in 2002 and the "farms" around the airport are a joke. They are more like backyard gardens in the front yard.

I'm sure the "farmers" are heavily subsidized by the government, because there was no way they could feed a 1/2 a person per farm and they were out there working their "fields" during the day.

It appears if you don't want to live on top of your neighbor in Japan, you need to be a farmer. Its seems the only way to get a house with a yard.

[USNBandit]

As you ride the train into town from Narita there are some plots that look like large gardens, but the people in this article are a different breed.

Between 12 people they have bought a parcel with a total size less than a quarter acre with the express purpose of blocking the airport.