Have they not heard of “just blowing the thing up”?

In the States, if we want a building to come down, we basically just strap a bunch of explosives to it and let it collapse.

This causes a few problems. First, it means that many parts of the building become unusable as they’re, well, exploded. Second, it can cause a host of problems for neighbors, not only due to the noise of the explosion, but because of the fact that blowing something up scatters debris all over the place.

In Japan, they take a different approach. Rather than going all thermite on them, they destroy them one layer at a time, saving what is salvageable to be used in other construction. It’s a pretty fascinating process to watch — though perhaps not as much as watching the local old hotel go “boom.”