Parking 駐車

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Japan is a very densely populated nation, and the Yokohama-Tokyo area is the pinnacle of this mass of people. For the purpose of comparison, the population of Japan is just under half of that of the U.S., but the land mass is roughly the same size as California. It's pretty easy to forget this on a daily basis, but sometimes reminders of the value of land here will pop up. Case in point, this parking area in my neighborhood. All of the cars are parked on individual sheets of metal which are attached to the structure with large chains. It seems that there has to be at least one empty space per level so that if one wants to retrieve their car from the third level the other levels can move horizontally like a slide puzzle, allowing the top cars to be lowered to the ground. A few of the apartments in the neighborhood also have multi-level covered parking for bicycles. Amazing.