THEY LAUGHTED! THEY CALLED ME MAD!

[Prince Glittersnatch III]

The Japanese mayor who was laughed at for building a huge sea wall - until his village was left almost untouched by tsunami

The huge sea wall and floodgates took 12 years to build and had been widely regarded as a £20million folly. But today one former Japanese mayor is being hailed as a saviour after the grandiose construction allowed his small town escaped the devastation wrought by the March 11 tsunami.

In the rubble of Japan's northeast coast, Fudai stands as tall as ever after. No homes were swept away. In fact, they barely got wet.

The 3,000 residents owe their lives to the late Kotaku Wamura, who lived through an earlier tsunami and made it a priority of his four-decade tenure as mayor to defend his people from the next one.

The 51-foot-high gate, which was criticised as being a wasteful public works project in the 1970s, protected the town from the tsunami

The floodgate project was criticized as wasteful in the 1970s. But the gate and an equally high seawall behind the community's adjacent fishing port protected Fudai from the waves that obliterated so many other towns.

Since the tsunami, residents have been visiting his grave to pay respects.

'It cost a lot of money. But without it, Fudai would have disappeared,' said seaweed fisherman Satoshi Kaneko, 55, whose business has been ruined but who is happy to have his family and home intact.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1386978/The-Japanese-mayor-laughed-building-huge-sea-wall–village-left-untouched-tsunami.html

[Triple Zero]

It's only funny until you call a "sea wall" by its proper name ... "Dyke".

They work best when you build lots of them.

[MMIX]

It's only funny until you call a "sea wall" by its proper name ... "Dyke".

They work best when you build lots of them.

but only if there is a little Dutch boy with a dry wit finger

[Xooxe]

It actually reminds me of a song called Katastrofen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oid90rKeLnA
[English translation]

The weather report says there will be lots of rain
There will be flood within 24 hours
There'll be no life under a freshly sharpened guillotine
The weather report says there will be lots of rain

Look at this huge wave
And recognize our thin chance
Let everything go, Ms. Sudine
Ms. Sudine, hurry up and come out of the bathroom

Leave everything behind, put women and children into boats
Run for your lives, uncle Egil sounds the alarm
You have to run, even if the house is on fire
Cos now we are getting wet

The weather report says there will be lots of rain
No-one believes me when I say there will be a flood
They have forgotten the former times
You know I was right last time

When I said there would be winter in October
And that the king was going to be shot
And that there was someone in Transylvania who liked blood
But people forget too fast
I am speaking the truth, it won't be long
Tomorrow the flood will come