Google Street View is a somewhat useful and occasionally NSFW way to look at a map. You’ve probably used it to see what your street looks like (doesn’t everyone do this?) But other than giving you a fairly decent idea of what to expect when driving through an unfamiliar location, it’s not that much fun. Until now. As with practically everything else on the Internet, a surefire way to make something more enjoyable is to add cats. Hiroshima’s tourist board has developed a version of Google Street View that affords a cat’s perspective on the city of Onomichi. Here you can paw your way around the city from about one foot off the ground.
[Visit Onomichi, Japan, with the cat’s eye view here]
“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,” comments a tourism spokesperson. Onomichi was chosen for a cat’s-eye perspective because the city has a large number of felines, As well as the usual information on shops and restaurants, there are features that will appeal to cats and cat-lovers (the cursor is a cat’s paw, for instance.) You can even meet 11 real local cats along the way. A word of caution: the site features meows on the soundtrack, which freaked out my cat, so you might want to turn down the volume.
