"Hiroshima eyes tourist boost with cat’s-eye view of city streets"

Photo and text borrowed from The Japan Times, 9/4/15.

Tourism bosses in Hiroshima Prefecture have come up with what they hope will draw more feline-loving visitors: a Google-style street view for cats.

Billed as a world’s first, officials this week launched an online map that explores the streets of the port city of Onomichi from the “purrspective” of a four-pawed visitor.

“We decided to focus on cats because they know everything about the city, including the back streets,” a tourism spokesman at Hiroshima Prefecture said.

He added that the city of about 150,000 people is known for its many felines and has a street known as “Cat Lane.”

The map is based on the perspective of Lala, a fluffy kitty with emerald-colored eyes, who lives with a local hair salon owner.

So far the map covers just two streets but plans to expand its reach are in the works using a camera attached to a stick that hovers 20 cm above the ground.

Viewers can trace what Lala — appointed the head of the prefecture’s “back street tourism” division — sees from her low-level perspective.

The unlikely feline-focused tourism bid is not Japan’s first.

Wakayama Prefecture drew thousands of tourists to a regional train station where a cat served as nominal stationmaster.

Tortoiseshell-colored Tama was credited with single-pawedly saving the provincial Kishigawa Line after being appointed master of tiny Kishi Station.

With the regional railway losing money, the station lost its last human employee in April 2006, passing on the mantle to Tama, who delighted in strolling around her own office wearing the formal uniform cap of Wakayama Electric Railway.

After Tama’s death in June, a new cat took over the position.

Source: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/09/04/national/hiroshima-eyes-tourist-boost-cats-eye-view-city-streets/#.Vevgqs5ZG2w

Hiroshima Cat Street View: http://hiroshima-welcome.jp/kanpai/catstreetview/

"Google to photograph street views of evacuated town in Fukushima"

From Japan Today, 3/8/11:

It wasn’t just the earthquake or tsunami of March 11, 2011 that shattered the town of Namie in Fukushima Prefecture; it was the subsequent radiation. Slowly creeping across the once fertile land, it ripped families from their homes and banished them to evacuation centers elsewhere. Today, nearly two years after the worse nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, the entire 86 square miles of Namie have been declared uninhabitable due to high levels of radioactive cesium. Even if families wanted to return, they can’t.

Amid this tragic loss, Google Street View is giving the people of Namie a chance to visit the town they were forced to flee.

The Street View project was requested by Tamotsu Baba, the mayor of Namie town. Baba explains in the video below, “By photographing the town and making those photographs publicly available, we can show the townspeople the condition of the streets. In addition, I want to show the world the true state of Namie.”

Photographing will take several weeks and Google hopes to make the images available to the public in the coming months. It seems that Namie, formerly described as “the forgotten town” in popular Japanese magazine, Bungei ShunjuI, will no longer be forgotten thanks to the efforts of Google and Mayor Baba.

Source: http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/google-to-photograph-street-views-of-evacuated-town-in-fukushima