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As I was told recently that it became possible for pedestrians to walk through the JR Shinagawa station from east to west or vise versa recently, I went there this evening. I rode on an escalator from the west entrance of station building to a leveled up concourse which had the ticket gates for JR trains. I walked straight through the concouse toward east and came to the elevated corridor, which crossed across the many railway trucks. And I got to the east exit and took the escalator down to the plaza of east exit. Until a few weeks ago, the corridor was not straight. As it had the ladders or slopes, pedestrians had to climb up and down thorough the corridor. Once you got to the elevated floor at both ends by riding on escalators, you can walk on flat corridor. In 2003(?), the station will become a terminal station for the Tokaido new super express trains. The big scale construction is being under way now. Furthermore many huge office buildings are being built around both sides of the station. As the Roppongi area renovation project and also the Shiodome renovation project have been almost finished, the Shinagawa redevelopment project is one of the biggest constructions in Tokyo Metropolis, I think.
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* On October 14, "M"U.S. firm announced that they lowered the rating of GM and Ford. But on the next day, both of GM and Ford announced their third quarter results were much better than the estimates. The stock price at the New York Stock Exchange raised suddenly. Even the specialists for auto industry could not know what would happen on the next day. I think New York is a casino for world big investors. Under such a circumstance, the Standard & Poor's, a leading rating firm, announced on October 16 that they lowered the GM's long-term debt to BBB from BBB-plus. The firm concerned about the growing shortfall pension fund, the poor operation of Fiat, in which GM has 20 percent stake and the rejection of FCC on the proposed merger of GM's Hughes Electronics with EchoStar Communications. "M" firm said it downgraded GM because of the excess production capacity. But just after GM announced its good results, the firm cut drastically the estimate of its sales for the next year. As there is the other big problem, the attack on Iraq, the steady economy is not expected in the near future, I presume.