Thread

My weird new hobby: Wandering around Tokyo on Google Maps

429 points · 181 comments · ahmedhossamdev

rambambram · 1790275177 · focus · HN ↗
I had to click this title!
For some months now I do basically the same, but without the clicking in Streetview. There are some channels on Youtube where someone walks through neighborhoods in Tokyo, I found I really enjoy these. The streets are so clean and the houses so beautiful. Indeed, once in a while a Japanese sports car pops up around a corner, just standing there on somebody's driveway.
I also enjoy the walk-throughs of neighborhoods in New York (edit: now that I think about it, this started with following ari@home, a streamer who makes electronic music on the fly while walking and having an open mic). I tried Dallas once, I guess, but it was all way too big and bulky (but it was down town I guess, so that's to be expected of a lot of cities on this planet).
Does anybody have ideas for other nice spots on this beautiful planet!? I think I know Tokyo by now. ;)
1. MrGilbert · 1790277543 · focus · HN ↗
  For a long time, there was a livestream on Youtube that showed a part of Tokyo. Not sure which part, but there was a highway and railroad. And it was somehow soothing to me, because if it was night here, the sun would rise there. I always imagined myself there. I miss this stream.
  1. netsharc · 1790279942 · focus · HN ↗
    If we're thinking of the same angle, is it from this channel? <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbTLJi8lXWIt_d1AtRv4Nmw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbTLJi8lXWIt_d1AtRv4Nmw
    Looks like it's not streaming live any more, but there are a few short recordings of that livestream on it.
    As for the location: <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place//@35.6621727,139.7579444,161a,35y,160.13h,67.04t" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/maps/place//@35.6621727,139.7579444,1...
    MrGilbert · 1790317487 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah, that's the channel! Thank you for the location. There are now some more channel that stream live, but what I liked about this channel the most is that it also transmitted live audio.[0] I always thought about repurposing an old Raspi and a picture-frame style hdmi monitor to let it run on, like a window to another world.
    [0]: This one is doing it, too: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLQhbRGv5qU" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLQhbRGv5qU
  2. QuantumNomad_ · 1790280912 · focus · HN ↗
    Many years ago I stumbled across a webcam from an outdoor go cart track somewhere in Japan, and I was watching it a little bit. It was an internet connected webcam, rather than YouTube or anything like that. I still think about that place sometimes but I have no idea where in Japan it was, and no clear details about it to find it again.
2. veqq · 1790277656 · focus · HN ↗
  Sibiu and Brasov in Romania; Krakow in Poland; Guanajuato, Zacatecas, San Miguel, Patzcuaro in Mexico; Merida and Campeche in Mexico (very different vibes, so separated), possibly Regensburg and Heidelberg in Germany
  1. rambambram · 1790284562 · focus · HN ↗
    Thanks!
3. JKCalhoun · 1790277825 · focus · HN ↗
  A lot of Slow TV of trains rolling through Norway.
4. FuriouslyAdrift · 1790278165 · focus · HN ↗
  Lee Chapman does actual photo-walking tours of Tokyo and Osaka... sign ups are going on right now!
  <a href="https://leechapman.photos/tokyo-photowalk-tours" rel="nofollow">https://leechapman.photos/tokyo-photowalk-tours
  <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/videos/travel/2016/08/11/tokyo-pov-lee-chapman.cnn" rel="nofollow">http://edition.cnn.com/videos/travel/2016/08/11/tokyo-pov-le...
5. leptons · 1790278399 · focus · HN ↗
  This is basically all I did during covid lockdowns, with a Quest VR headset. I explored the world. Spend afternoons in Paris, France and then I'm in Venice Italy. The neat thing is some of the museums in these cities have walk-throughs, so I got to visit a lot of museums too, as if I was walking around inside them looking around in VR.
  Then I got an app for the VR headset that connected to a bike pedal sensor, and I rode a stationary bike all over the place. That was a lot of fun while being stuck inside for months.
  1. mrbonner · 1790278876 · focus · HN ↗
    I really like this setup. Coukd you share a bit about the hardware and software in case we want to replicate? Thanks for sharing!
    leptons · 1790286824 · focus · HN ↗
    <a href="https://www.meta.com/experiences/vzfit-explore-cycle-get-fit/2088366894520136" rel="nofollow">https://www.meta.com/experiences/vzfit-explore-cycle-get-fit...
    You buy whatever bluetooth pedal sensor they reccomend and pair it woth the VR headset. It's been years since I used it, so I don't really remember more details than this.
6. tasoeur · 1790279159 · focus · HN ↗
  Hello fellow flâneur! Though you won’t get the same level of safety, I definitely recommend Paris as a destination to walk around. The city feels like a museum and you can end up finding all sort of random monuments and beautiful architecture along the way. Also some cool street art. Obviously use common sense and you’ll be fine.
  PS: I did Tokyo quite a lot, Shanghai too, though you usually need to take the metro at some point. San Francisco is also great if you don’t mind the hills (and also use common sense).
  1. rambambram · 1790284136 · focus · HN ↗
    You're talking about digital walking, or real walking? I real-walked in Paris by night (around Moulin Rouge) and it was definitely a memorable evening. Taking a boat trip by day was also museum-like.
    WhyComboNadir · 1790308971 · focus · HN ↗
    I agree, Paris is wonderful for either in-person or virtual walks. Most cities have large pockets of uninteresting zones, but Paris rarely has that. In the dozens of times I've been to Paris in my life, I have usually found a whole new cool small street that is often just 20 meters off a more trodden street. My obvious technique is to pick two points in the city and try to walk as direct as possible between them, forcing myself down side streets instead of walking down some grand boulevard for an hour. -- as I walk I'll put a star in my Google Map on anything interesting that I find so next time I'm in the area I can see that it is around the corner.
7. karlgkk · 1790279945 · focus · HN ↗
  > Indeed, once in a while a Japanese sports car pops up around a corner, just standing there on somebody's driveway.
  I worked for a Japanese company. My Japanese coworkers would do the exact same thing in cities like Miami. When they visited here, we saw a drop top Mustang and that was a bigger deal to them than any Porsche or Lambo.
  1. rambambram · 1790281290 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm from Europe and back in 2002 I visited Washington DC (first and only visit of USA). I can fully understand why people gasp at American cars. I vividly remember spotting a Ford Thunderbird (the Retro Bird of 2001-2005) in the wild, a car that I only knew from pictures.
    karlgkk · 1790282561 · focus · HN ↗
    Did you know that you can’t really get a sedan that can tow in the US anymore? How are those sedans with the exact same models sold in the EU, but they’re just not rated for towing (and using them for towing makes them uninsurable)
    So to me, my big grin is when I see a bmw 328i hauling a trailer.
    rambambram · 1790283995 · focus · HN ↗
    Sounds like some American car brands protect their interests here. ;) I have even seen Smart cars towing (small) trailers here in The Netherlands, although that's extreme. But even today I helped a woman coupling a one-axle trailer (3mtr long) to her VW Polo, which is pretty common to see.
    obmelvin · 1790286905 · focus · HN ↗
    A few years ago while driving/moving from IL back to CA, I saw a Polaris Slingshot towing a U-Haul trailer across Illinois, Iowa and then we saw it again in Nebraska later that day. It was awesome!!
    I probably have a picture if anyone really wants to see (I am definitely a car spotter)
8. stevenwoo · 1790281345 · focus · HN ↗
  There’s a show on Japanese television about touring Japan on bicycle which may or may not appeal to you <a href="https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/shows/5115002/" rel="nofollow">https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/shows/5115002/
  1. mhast · 1790330061 · focus · HN ↗
    Chris from "Abroad in Japan" has also done a couple of Japan biking trips. He also has quite a few travel logs from less obvious places in Japan. (Including some very obvious ones, like Mt Fuji.)
    They are edited to be a bit more "dramatic" but once you get into the actual day to day stuff they are quite chill.
    <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTHXWPeJnNA" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTHXWPeJnNA
9. seizethecheese · 1790282454 · focus · HN ↗
  It’s fun to go to random places not know for their beauty, too. There are walking tour videos of basically everywhere. New Delhi and Huancayo are ones I recall finding interesting
  1. rambambram · 1790284521 · focus · HN ↗
    When I need some energy boost - or energy drain - I check videos of very busy streets in India or Bangladesh. So interesting, but within 10 minutes I'm tired as hell because of all the noise and movement.
10. llm_nerd · 1790283300 · focus · HN ↗
  Those FPV walks through various Japanese area videos, from channels like @4KJAPAN or @VIRTUALJAPAN, are strange because they actually make me feel like I've been there.
  Like I have a memory of walking through Japan and it can be a bit jarring when I realize it was just a video I watched.
  It feels as real to me as actual cities I've walked through. Like I remember my "walks" through various Japanese areas more vividly than my walks through Florence, Italy, or Brussels, Belgium, but I've actually been to the latter two.
  1. rambambram · 1790284313 · focus · HN ↗
    I agree! A combination of the slowness of walking an me being able to take everything in while lazily sitting on my chair, it definitely does something. Even the sounds, like the humming of aircos(?) and the tunes they play near stations or crossings, get pretty vivid this way.
11. the_sleaze_ · 1790283302 · focus · HN ↗
  Nice, Colmar, Basil, sections of Paris, Vienna, Barcelona and Madrid.
12. harpersealtako · 1790284186 · focus · HN ↗
  The Philippines is great for streetview, wikipedia, random internet rabbit holes. You can just zoom in until you find some island somewhere and there's probably something interesting you can learn about it. If you're lucky there's a road with streetview on it, maybe a village, a church, etc. You can spend hours trying to figure out what's going on there.
  Many of the islands don't even have wikipedia pages. You can spend hours just scouring the internet for information on what the heck is going on on some island. Sometimes you find the amateur website for a local school, or some account of a tourist or traveler going there and reporting what they found.
  Sometimes you learn that there is an old Spanish graveyard that has since sunken underwater, the statues and tombstones and crosses now covered in coral and barnacles, with a single lone cross still visible above the sea.
  Sometimes you learn that the village is a sprawling shantytown of fishing huts and thatched-roof shacks on precarious stilts 15 feet above the ocean.
  Sometimes you learn that it's the site of a WWII battle or famous explorer visited the island or a plane crashed there in the 60s or some other interesting tidbit.
  Sometimes you learn that it's been occupied by jihadist terrorists for the past 40 years and that in order to encourage foreign visitors (who might not want to go there due to numerous past kidnappings of foreigners for ransom), tourists are assigned a free, mandatory vanguard of heavily armed marine commandos as human shields to defend them whenever they go to the beach.
  Sometimes you find a remote archipelago where every island seems to have a different christian denomination on it, like you have the island with the Mormon church, the one with the Catholic church, the one with the Iglesia ni Cristo church, the one with the Seventh Day Adventists, etc. etc. and you start to wonder how exactly that happened, and what the locals think about the weirdos on the island next door who got a very different story from the missionaries that came there than they did.
  Sometimes it's just so obscure nobody has ever written anything about it in any language you know, you can see some blurry houses and rice paddies and outrigger canoes on the beach on satellite view but the village is otherwise unmarked, and you start to wonder, exactly what goes on there? Who are these people in this strange little fishing village with their canoes and rice paddies and corrugated-iron roof huts, what are they hiding, and how do I get there? And pretty soon you start looking at plane tickets and schedules and trying to imagine the complicated and uncertain logistics of traveling to such a remote place, because surely it's not that hard, there is an island only 30 miles away with an airstrip, beach villas and a handful of restaurants, and surely you could just fly there and charter a boat or something...
  1. rambambram · 1790284422 · focus · HN ↗
    Thanks, I also liked walking Manila on Youtube. Interesting place!
13. Vinnl · 1790287147 · focus · HN ↗
  There are many old and very walkable cities in the Netherlands, any of the larger ones would probably be nice.
  1. rambambram · 1790352285 · focus · HN ↗
    > There are many old and very walkable cities in the Netherlands, any of the larger ones would probably be nice. Any particular spots that you want to share?
    I'm from the oldest city in The Netherlands myself, so I know Nijmegen. My tip for people visiting the Netherlands: both the older areas just outside the city centers of Nijmegen and (especially) Arnhem are very nice.
14. crabmusket · 1790300474 · focus · HN ↗
  > There are some channels on Youtube where someone walks through neighborhoods in Tokyo
  Shout out to Rambalac whose videos I enjoy a lot for this. No words, no music, just walking. An occasional vending machine stop.
  1. m4rtink · 1790320931 · focus · HN ↗
    Rambalac is so nice - I have been watching his videos for many years & even retraced his steps a couple times during actual trips tp Japan.
    One interesting channel I started watching recently is called Watatabi: <a href="https://m.youtube.com/@watatabi" rel="nofollow">https://m.youtube.com/@watatabi
    Its quite different from Rambalac - called Watatabi: <a href="https://m.youtube.com/@watatabi" rel="nofollow">https://m.youtube.com/@watatabi
    Its a channel about exploring more remote places, like ancient onsen ryokans, scenic places & natural landmarks. Unlike Rambalac there is editing and naration but in this case it kinda fits the different scope & the places visited are super interesting. :)
  2. Tade0 · 1790337342 · focus · HN ↗
    I've found a channel doing the same format, but driving - @JapanRoadTrip
    No commentary or music - just cruisin' in 4k HDR.
15. johnwalkr · 1790305082 · focus · HN ↗
  The thing that people can't put their finger on about pictures of Tokyo is lack of cars parked on the street. It makes so many pictures timeless, especially if there are few people in view.
  1. rambambram · 1790352001 · focus · HN ↗
    Now that you say... that might be a bigger part of the overall feel than I thought.
16. ViscountPenguin · 1790312735 · focus · HN ↗
  I love tokyo, but tbh, I don't think it's particularly clean? At least when I went there was a fair bit of rubbish around the place; certainly not as much as you'd find in most of Europe but definitely far far more than you'd expect given the cities reputation. I find most of Australia ~as clean.
  1. alfg · 1790320399 · focus · HN ↗
    Were you staying in Shinjuku or Shibuya? Those areas can get particularly dirty in recent years. I think overall Tokyo is still pretty clean in comparison from other places I've lived or traveled though.
    ViscountPenguin · 1790329197 · focus · HN ↗
    We stayed in Nishi-nippori, but went all around. No clue if the area we stayed in has some kind of reputation though?
  2. mark_something · 1790345960 · focus · HN ↗
    Strange, I walked in different regions of Tokyo, and I found it to be very clean. This is in part because in Japan it is not done to eat while walking in the street.
    I remember that in Osaka on Saturday night there were young people kicking trash around, that was the only time I found Japan dirty.
17. jamiek88 · 1790318643 · focus · HN ↗
  Shenzen! It’s like looking at the near future. Half expect to see androids wandering about and sometimes see robots.
18. chompy_99 · 1790320150 · focus · HN ↗
  <a href="https://youtube.com/@tokyolens" rel="nofollow">https://youtube.com/@tokyolens
  If you think you know Tokyo, think again! This guy really got me into a rabbit hole of all these cool places and spots all around Tokyo and the surrounding areas.
  He left his corporate job in the US to train to become a pilot in Japan and make YouTube on the side, exploring the beautiful country :)
  1. mathgorges · 1790322969 · focus · HN ↗
    Norm does make some really beautiful content, but be warned that he can be a bit of a bastard in the comments if you say anything that disagrees with his opinion. I caught some strays myself once when pointing out that the largest second hand electronics market in Tokyo wasn't the one that he claimed it was.
    Findecanor · 1790335886 · focus · HN ↗
    I long suspected that I had been shadow-banned from commenting on his channel, and I couldn't figure out why. Then I found a subreddit with several threads about his behaviour and it made a little more sense.
19. pjc50 · 1790322434 · focus · HN ↗
  York is good: you can even walk the walls on Google Maps <a href="https://maps.app.goo.gl/Nbke1JWAeaWBWiicA" rel="nofollow">https://maps.app.goo.gl/Nbke1JWAeaWBWiicA
  The center around the Minster and the Shambles should also be good. I know it in person but not through the maps.
  Most European "old town" centers should be interesting. Look for the dense bit of pedestrian streets that's impassable to road traffic.
20. windex · 1790335202 · focus · HN ↗
  I love doing this as well. I have something like this running on a large 4k screen. Something about looking up once in a while and seeing some other place, with the sounds of the city seems to appeal to me while working. Even helps me reset from the strange anxieties of modern jobs.

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