And yet, in its own way, it is typical of many of the new buildings in the Japanese capital.
The Japanese capital is in competition with Istanbul and Madrid, with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decision to be made this September.
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The prince arrived in the Japanese capital on Monday evening after the Nikkei share index slumped to its lowest for 26 years.
In 1964, the able-bodied athletes went to Tokyo for the Olympics and shortly afterward the Japanese capital also played host to the disabled athletes.
The volcano, which last erupted just over 300 years ago, lies to the south-west of Tokyo and is visible from the Japanese capital on a clear day.
Asia's oft-claimed miracle economic growth consisted of two parts: productive investment that resulted from Western and Japanese capital and technology, and non-productive investment that Asians made with their own savings.
On the night of March 9-10, 1945 months before atomic bombs found their way to the Pacific theater 300 B-29s loaded with incendiary weapons destroyed 16 square miles of the Japanese capital.
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These low rates have not inspired the Japanese to put capital into either machinery or houses.
Relatively low profitability has not often prevented major Japanese firms from attracting capital, either debt or equity.
The average Japanese has more human capital than anyone else.
It also ended its liquid-crystal display venture with rival Samsung, while inking a new capital alliance with Japanese electronics and camera maker Olympus Corp. to strengthen its medical equipment business.
The first is raising capital from foreign investors for cash-strapped Japanese firms. (For example, Japanese banks have issued lots of securities to bolster their depleted capital.) The second is the trickle of privatisations and new issues.
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Delta Capital is talking to Japanese universities about leasing their land, building dormitories and managing them.
Over the past two years Barclays Capital has doubled its Japanese equity business staffing to 290 persons.
Only 10% of Japanese firms use leases to finance capital investment, versus one-third in the U.S., so there's plenty of room to expand.
Since mid-1999 the U.S. and Japanese markets and the Morgan Stanley Capital International EAFE Index of European and Asian stocks are all off between 13% and 22%.
Crew debuted its first chambray suit this spring cut in a rigid Japanese variety made in the denim capital of Kojima and reports that it's already a top seller.
Like Hanoi, Laos introduced economic reforms in 1986 and as in Vietnam they led to visible progress - new roads, international hotels, a modern Japanese-funded airport in the capital.
We are seeing real estate bubbles similar to those in Japan, and, as Thomas Friedman will happily tell you, the Chinese government has an even heavier hand in directing capital than did the Japanese.
The declaration came one month after the Japanese army occupied Nanking, then the capital of China.
Financial deregulation would also enable Japanese entrepreneurs to tap new sources of capital.
Much of what is special about Japanese capitalism simply reflects the inadequate rewards that capital has attracted.
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My view is that Futenma is no longer a project on which any Japanese government is willing to expend precious political capital.
With capital insufficient to support their assets, Japanese banks have almost stopped lending at home.
Indeed anyone who bought silver since March 18 when the central banks engaged in coordinated intervention to stem the rising Japanese yen, is not only under water facing capital losses, it is also costing them much more to remain long.
An exceptionally well-knit documentary about the horrifying events that took place in Nanking between December, 1937, and March, 1938, when the Japanese Army fell upon the city, then the capital of China, and slaughtered as many as three hundred thousand soldiers and civilians and raped twenty thousand women.
That would send capital flooding back into Japan--making Japanese stocks strong relative to all else.
For one thing, the Japanese financed their purchases in the United States with private capital.
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