Wander Our Streets

You can walk down our street on the web. At the bottom of this post there will  be a place to click that will allow you to see "our" house from street level and then wander up and down the street as you wish.

The directions that follow here may seem long, but it's actually pretty intuitive once you jump in and give it a try.

But first a few words of explanation for those of you who have not done this before. This view is offered by Google Street View. After you click on the link, you should see a screen with various things on it. Wait until you see a view of the front of a house seen from street level (and from off to the side just a bit). It's the house shown in the picture at the right. You will notice that  it is not a view looking down from above showing house tops which you may see first.) It may appear quickly or it may take 60 seconds or more for the house front to appear. Be patient.

Note that if you have an older computer, this may not work at all. But give it time before you give up. Wait five minutes for the house front to appear just to be sure.

That house front with the little car in the carport and the round-top tree is "our" house. You are standing in the street a little to the right of the front of our house. Once you are there you can click on the "<<" symbol at the top of the vertical bar that divides the image from some text on the left that shows information about Kyoto. When you click  on the "<<" the text will go away and you will have a wider view.

For an even bigger view (full screen if your computer will handle it), notice the two symbols in the upper-right corner of the street-view image. One is an "X". That will close the window. Don't click that. The other is a square box with little tiny arrowheads pointing outward at each corner. That's the "Full Screen" button. When you are ready, click it. You can end "Screen View" any time and return to the normal (smaller) view by tapping the "Esc" button on your computer keyboard. (On my computer it is near the upper left corner of the keyboard.)

Next... in the normal small view or in the full screen view, you are ready to wander around. Use your mouse (or touch pad on a laptop) to "drag" the picture to the left or right. (That is, put the mouse cursor in the middle of the picture, press-and-hold the left mouse button, then (while still pressing) "drag" the image to the left or right. Magic! Press-and-drag to the left or right until you are looking straight up or down the street.

You will notice ghostly squares and ovals as you move your mouse around. Ignore them. They can be used to do things, but for now, don't worry about them.

(You will discover that you can also drag to look up at the house tops or down at the street. But don't go too far that way or you may get confused.)

Now you are ready to wander. Notice two things: 1) a grayish stripe extending into the distance floating in the middle of the street, and 2) little arrowheads on that gray stripe here and there. The gray stripe tells you where you can go. This is important when you come to a cross street. You will know you are at a cross street (where you can turn) because another gray stripe will cross the one you are following.

Click on an arrowhead pointing away from you. That will jump you forward down the street about ten yards. The picture will get blurry and then clear up again showing the view from your new position. At any time you can drag the picture to one side or the other to look at the houses on either side. When you come to a cross street, you can click on one of its arrows to head in a new direction. You will not have turned. You'll be sliding sideways. So you may want to drag the picture around so you are looking in the direction you are going. (This all makes sense when you do it.)

You may have noticed by now that the gray stripe and arrowheads are also visible when you are looking to the side (or looking partly to the side). The stripe and arrowheads will be visible as long is your mouse pointer is hovering around somewhere in the picture. If you are looking to the side, this means that you can click on the arrowheads to "slide" down the street sideways facing the house fronts as you go (avoiding the need to turn to the side every ten yards).

If this all seems confusing, you might want  to print this page out so you can follow the steps one-by-one until it all begins to make sense. You may be surprised at how quickly it begins to feel quite natural. The great thing is that you can just reload the page at any time and start over. Next time go in a different direction.

If you have the time, you can navigate all the way to the Kyoto Train Station (5 miles South) or up into the surrounding hills. But that can take quite a while. You will probably want to stay in the neighborhood.

Are you ready to walk around our neighborhood? You might want to take a sandwich. If you get hooked, you could be in Kyoto for quite a while. Click here.