The city of Hiroshima has created a Google street map with a cat’s-eye view. Here’s the skinny from Business Insider:
If you’ve ever wanted to explore Japan as a cat, there’s a map for that.
The tourism board of Hiroshima recently created a site with street views from a cat’s perspective. It’s the first of its kind.
The map features streets in Onomichi, a port town east of Hiroshima. You can explore in 360 from a cat’s-eye view.
I can’t get the link to work, but let us know if you do. Here are some photos:
You can change the angle of the view, or even learn details about local shops that have blue icons (if you speak Japanese). You can also click any of the cat icons on lefthand side to teleport to a different location.
‘We’re seeking to introduce a different way to look at our cities,’ a Hiroshima tourism official told the Wall Street Journal. They chose to feature a map of Onomichi, because it boasts a very large population of stray cats.
The tourism board will add more locations to the map this month, including a famous shrine area in Onomichi. Now all cats will know where it’s at.
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Reader j.j. sent links about Mostik, a famous Russian cat. Her words are indented:
The bridge linking Crimea to Russia was just inaugurated by Putin by leading a convoy of trucks across the span; but did you know that a cat beat him to it? The cat, Mostik (which means “Little Bridge,”), was the “chief supervisor” of the bridge construction and was the first one to cross it. Here’s an article about him. Yeah, I know it’s a Russian news site, but this ain’t fake news. It has the most comprehensive info on Mostik. Also, here’s an excellent short video featuring this very hip cat. No subtitles. I like his looks.
Just a good photo of Mostik crossing the bridge before Putin. He has an instagram account.
Some more information from the link above:
Mostik, a former stray kitten taken in by builders and made the Kerch bridge project’s unofficial mascot in 2015, has a major following on social media, garnering nearly 20,000 followers on his Instagram and Facebook accounts, and the Russian social networking platform VKontakte.
The honorary ‘chief supervisor’ of the construction site has his own personal photographer. He’s also regularly driven around the construction site by a man named Mikhalych, inspecting progress made and allowing his followers to get the inside scoop on the current stage of the project.
On his days off, Mikhalych takes Mostik home, where he behaves like an ordinary cat and sleeps on his favorite red couch, the Crimean Bridge Information Center explainedto Sputnik’s sister agency RIA Novosti.
No one knows for sure when the orange and white cat was born, but workers choose to celebrate his birthday on November 29, the professional holiday of bridge builders in Russia. Last month, the cat celebrated his second birthday, and received a delicious bowl of shrimp from the builders.
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One of the most awesome cat videos ever posted. The nerve of that moggie!
So my cat fucking full on just walked in and dunked a fucking dead mouse in my fucking glass of wine and honestly I'm livid pic.twitter.com/Z8AvB5zcUA
— sick of mgk now he sucks again (@JonoScooter) May 5, 2018
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h/t: Snowy Owl, Barry, j.j.
There are some great cats. I do believe that last one is a set up. Unless he has film of the cat leaving the mouse in the wine I’m not going for that one.
I got it to work at this link:
https://hiroshima-welcome.jp/kanpai/catstreetview/index_2_on.html
But it’s slow to load
There’s superimposed cat meows throughout & the babble of traffic or people depending where you are in the street view
Click on a trail [orange dotted lines] to advance to a new position – there’s actually only a few viewing positions very far apart [they are 360 panoramic stills] & you’re jerked from one to the next as you click – not nearly as good as the real Street View experience
Yes, pretty good. You get that little meow every so often.
We can’t expect a Google run by cats to be just as effective as a Google run by humans.
On the off chance you’re being serious BJ [difficult to know] it ain’t a Street View run by cats fitted with cams.
The Hiroshima cat map didn’t work for me in Chrome on my Windows computer but it did work in Chrome on my Android phone though it seems pretty sluggish. My guess is that it is slow because a lot of people are visiting it due to the recent articles and its servers are only in Japan.
I’m in love with Mostik! What a cutie. There’s another video (also in Russian) that is the first recommended when you click on the one in this post, and it has even more great footage of burly construction workers fawning over this cat and treating him like a king. It’s just so cute and heartwarming.
Yeah. I wouldn’t have expected those burly dudes to be such soft touches for a cat.
And doesn’t Mostik look spiffy in his orange hard hat, all ready for work?