Friday Catblogging: Cat Street View

In Hiroshima, Japan, they’ve a variation on Google Map’s street view feature:

Hiroshima prefecture has designed a purr-fect map for tourists wishing to see some of its attractions from a different angle.

The prefecture on Tuesday launched a website with what it calls the world’s first “cat’s-eye view” street map, through which users can explore some locations in Onomichi city from a more grounded perspective.

“We were seeking to introduce a different way to look at our cities and offer a view of the streets that wasn’t available before,” a Hiroshima tourism official said. They decided on a cat’s-eye view because Onomichi, a port town known for its large number of cats, is also home to a museum dedicated to Japan’s ‘maneki-neko’ cat dolls, the official said.

The map can be manipulated with a cursor to see the city from a cat’s eye view. Clicking symbols on the grid shows other parts of the city; clicking on a silhouette of a cat generates a photo and description of that feline.

See, Hiroshima Map Offers Cat’s-Eye View @ Wall Street Journal’s Japan Real Time.

Direct Link: http://hiroshima-welcome.jp/kanpai/catstreetview/.