Around 1,800 volunteers used ropes and rollers over the weekend to drag the 360-tonne keep of Hirosaki Castle (a 17th-century fortress in Aomori prefecture, northern Japan) more than two metres along its path back to its original foundation. The effort employed hikiya, an ancient Japanese technique for moving buildings intact on rollers rather than dismantling them, and was needed after the castle's stone wall was damaged in a major earthquake and required full reconstruction. The public hand-pulling is largely ceremonial — machinery will complete the remaining roughly 73 metres by year's end — but demand was fierce, with some 8,000 people applying for just 1,800 spots, and the keep is not expected to reopen to visitors until 2033.