Improved google maps satellite imagery of Kyoto
posted February 7, 2006
You can now zoom down to within one step of maximum all over Kyoto city. You can see some of the stone groupings in the famous dry landscape garden at Ryoanji (under big brown roof at center; if you could zoom down one more level you could see if Richard Gere was there), and the shadow of the Kogetsudai moon reflecting sand cone in the garden at Ginkakuji (the little black point in lwer arm of the sand garden, and the roof of the Silver Pavilion is the pyramid in the trees just below to the left of the garden);
There’s also Kinkakuji, and Kiyomizu doesn’t look like much from space, does it?
heh – the KICH sticks out something aweful, as does the accommodation across the road!
About time they updated it though
I was playing around with it the other day trying to figure out the date the images come from. The condo where I used to live (completed 4/2004) looks to be done, at least the outside, and the place I live now is still a field and lake, so it hadn’t been started yet.
The geihinkan is still under construction.
The great gate of the Heian Shrine is not covered with scaffolding (was covered for several months starting in the summer of 2004).
Jusco Diamond City is still under construction, but looks to be almost done.
The foliage looks like late summer, with just a few trees starting to turn. My guess would be early fall 2003.
One other thing that’s interesting is that you can see the true shape of the Daimonji’s “Dai”, which is on a very steep slope and built to appear normal from ground level. The lower legs are really very very long (as I found out first hand when I tried to run up the longer of the two, into your waiting video camera).
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=kyoto&t=k&ll=35.022748,135.804856&spn=0.007618,0.014001&t=h
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