This beautiful Japanese kindergarten is made of shipping containers

In San Francisco, people are turning shipping containers into tiny apartments. In Japan, they're putting entire kindergarten classes in them.

Located in Japanese city of Saitama, OA Kindergarten spent 50 years in an ordinary schoolhouse. Recently, however, school leaders realized that the aging building couldn't adequately protect the young students from earthquakes. So with the help of architecture firms Hibino Sekkei and Youji no Shiro, the school went with an industrial-looking redesign.

OA Kindergarten's small campus is now made entirely of shipping containers, with a few spare parts from the former structure. The containers were chosen for their strength, as they are built to keep their shape under loads of weight and withstand the natural pounding of the ocean.

Judging by the finished product, the new school seems to be a serious improvement over the last one.