Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Coming and Going


Big Frank has seen something in the past week or so of Tokyo and Seoul. These are megacities in every sense of the word. The metropolitan area of Tokyo's population, as figured by the UN, is put at 36 million people! This is the largest metropolitan area in the world. Seoul is the fourth largest with 22 million. Each of these has a population density of around 2,000 people per square kilometer. Now keep in mind that Big Frank grew up in North Dakota - where the population density is around 1 person per square kilometer. Pretty much nobody in North Dakota wears a face mask when out and about. In these cities, however, it is a very common site. Two random photos taken by Big Frank captured (inadvertently) guys crossing his view wearing masks. What does this mean? Everything happens for a reason - OK, that's a cliche; but it is interesting, nonetheless - and they're going in different directions (that's because one's Korean and the other Japanese. They are either coming or going or else one is coming and the other is going. In either case - Big Frank is no longer going - he's coming back.

2 comments:

Kate said...

Tom, we in North Dakota are much more densely populated than 1 per square kilometer-we have 3.5 people per square kilometer. It's getting crowded here.

Big Frank Dickinson said...

Well it appears that the population is booming since I left! It's a good thing I got out when I did - don't think I could have stood the congestion!