Oct

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Front and centre

October 2, 2007 | 2 Comments | Joshua Gans

There are lots of great things to see at Tokyo Tower (the 333 metre, Eiffel Tower look alike — actually, Tokyo’s is slightly taller): the tower itself, the Guiness Book of Records museum, a great tricky art gallery, an acquarium and lots more. But what caught my attention, and I am not making this up, was the “Thrilling Economics House.” That is the name and, if that wasn’t enough to hook you, here is the blurb:

The economy is with us every moment of every day. In this house you can see and experience the thrill of knowing economics and will help you get daily tip that let you gain a lot if you know. The house if full of interesting things.

And it was true to its name. You enter the house and there is a display with a spherical dome. On one hemisphere is 1985 with Tokyo tower and some other landmarks sitting inside. Then it turns around to reveal 2005 and the models inside have grown to reflect economic growth. The growth is so much that the tower and other buildings have shattered the top of the dome almost knocking the US space shuttle out of orbit.

Over to the right, there is a counter of Japanese GDP. Every dollar generated goes up there. Then move on a little bit more and there is a wall of statistics although I wasn’t sure of what as it was all in Japanese.

But perhaps the most interesting bit was a set of blocks that the kids had to join together. The hard way was to search for the matching pairs of blocks and put them together. The easy way was to realise that each block represented an economic activity — say, mobile phones and cameras — that went together in what my keen economic eye recognised as complementors. Even if we could have read the labels to work this out, it was a little tricky. Let me give you an example: can anyone in the comments work out why ‘milk’ and ‘dog pooper scooper bags’ fit together nicely? [I know the answer and will reveal it later]

[Update: OK, here is the answer. They recycle material from milk cartons to use as pooper scooper bags. Comments were getting close]


Comments

2 Responses to “Front and centre”

  1. JB on October 2nd, 2007 5:04 pm

    The pooper scooper bags are also used as carry bags for the milk cartons?

  2. Andrew on October 3rd, 2007 12:12 am

    The suspense is killing me!