dear passenger, new lounge coming soon, inside the subway museum entrance, ginza station: marunouchi line, ginza line, and hibiya line ticket gates, otemachi station, near the tozai line concourse, ueno station, inside the ginza line ticket gate, asakusa station, inside the ginza line ticket gate, nihonbashi station, inside the ticket gates of the ginza line and tozai line, ikebukuro station marunouchi line ticket gate, ikebukuro shopping park (isp) ground exit, etc. tokyo subway headquarters 1f, the design was made by sculptor sueo kasagi. it was designed with the motif of “mercury” as “i want to express the feelings of post-war reconstruction and the growing hopes of young people.” in 1951, it was installed at the entrance of major stations, including the entrance to ginza station by the eidan subway. when it was first installed, it was painted gold, so there was a series of thefts. since then, the number has decreased due to station renovations, etc., but even now, when the business has been taken over by the tokyo subway (tokyo metro), it can still be seen at some stations. mercury is a heavy, silvery-white metal that is liquid at room temperature. compared to other metals, it is a poor conductor of heat, but a fair conductor of electricity. it has a freezing point of −38.83 °c and a boiling point of 356.73 °c, both the lowest of any stable metal, although preliminary experiments on copernicium and flerovium have indicated that they have even lower boiling points. this effect is due to lanthanide contraction and relativistic contraction reducing the radius of the outermost electrons, and thus weakening the metallic bonding in mercury. upon freezing, the volume of mercury decreases by 3.59% and its density changes from 13.69 g/cm3 when liquid to 14.184 g/cm3 when solid. the coefficient of volume expansion is 181.59 × 10−6 at 0 °c, 181.71 × 10−6 at 20 °c and 182.50 × 10−6 at 100 °c (per °c). solid mercury is malleable and ductile and can be cut with a knife. from the beginning, mercury had essentially the same aspects as hermes, wearing winged shoes (talaria) and a winged hat (petasos), and carrying the caduceus, a herald’s staff with two entwined snakes that was apollo’s gift to hermes. he was often accompanied by a rooster, herald of the new day, a ram or goat, symbolizing fertility, and a tortoise, referring to mercury’s legendary invention of the lyre from a tortoise shell. mercury’s surface is similar in appearance to that of the moon, showing extensive mare-like plains and heavy cratering, indicating that it has been geologically inactive for billions of years. it is more heterogeneous than the surface of mars or the moon, both of which contain significant stretches of similar geology, such as maria and plateaus. albedo features are areas of markedly different reflectivity, which include impact craters, the resulting ejecta, and ray systems. larger albedo features correspond to higher reflectivity plains. mercury has dorsa (also called “wrinkle-ridges”), moon-like highlands, montes (mountains), planitiae (plains), rupes (escarpments), and valles (valleys).