At around 7:38am this morning, there was a widespread blackout in Tokyo. This is all but normal in this city. Stopping all trains, and traffic lights, it was a shock that lasted over an hour. A blackout of this scale has not happened in Japan for 30 years, some 800,000 households were affected.

The blackout seemed to be caused by a boat on one of Tokyo’s many rivers that was carrying a crane. The top of the crane clipped one of the high tension high voltage power transmission lines above the river, and ooops, who turned out the lights..