For various reasons, the water infrastructure in Osaka, Japan is relatively old, and as such is in need of maintenance.
Someone donated ¥560,000,000 ($3.6 million) to the city to support these repairs.\
Nice story, but the interesting bit was that this anonymous donation was made in the form of 21kg of gold bars.
I want to know the rest of the story.
Osaka has received a hefty gift of gold bars worth 560m yen (£2.7m) from an anonymous donor and a request for its specific use: to fix the Japanese city’s dilapidated water pipes.
The gold bars, weighing a total of 21kg (46lb), were given to the Osaka City Waterworks Bureau in November by the donor who wants to help improve ageing water pipes, the mayor, Hideyuki Yokoyama, told reporters on Thursday.
“It’s a staggering amount and I was speechless,” Yokoyama said. “Tackling ageing water pipes requires a huge investment, and I cannot thank enough for the donation.”
The mayor said the city –Japan’s third largest, with 2.8 million people – would respect the donor’s wishes and use the gift to improve waterworks projects.
Most of Japan’s main public infrastructure was built during the rapid postwar economic growth, but urban development in Osaka, a regional commercial hub, started earlier than many and its water pipes and other infrastructure are ageing earlier, the city’s waterworks official, Eiji Kotani, said.
Osaka needed to renew 160 miles (260km) of water pipes, he said. Renewing a 1.2 mile segment would cost about 500m yen, Kotani said.
If I had to venture a guess, I would think that this might be someone from the Yakusa, as making such a donation in gold does seem to imply that some sort of money laundering was involved, and doing this is very much a Yakusa sort of thing.
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