My little neighborhood here in Japan has pretty much been in existence for twenty years. I came across an old aerial photo of the housing estate on which I live during its construction in 1989.
You can clearly see the baseball ground there, and there’s a small hospital, too, which still stands today. Beyond that, in Heisei 1, everything had been cleared away to make room for factories and houses. In fact, as you can see from a Google Earth image below of how things look now, large chunks of the mountain were also removed for my wealthy neighbors who bought land at the height of the economic bubble.
How has your area changed over the last two decades? Wouldn’t it be interesting to find out?
If you like, you can find me on Twitter at @nick_ramsay. I'd love to hear from you!
Interesting post. I’ve heard that my neighborhood has changed a bit away from the station, but near the station it hasn’t changed in 20 or more years.
That’s crazy! I’ve checked Google Maps before and saw the neighbors car parked in their driveway, that was interesting.
Yep, you can zoom in a whole lot closer than I have in that picture.
Which ballpark is that? Who plays there?
I know that most of the stuff in my neighborhood in Chiba wasn’t here 10 years ago so there was probably nothing here 20 years ago except maybe some farms.
The park is Kakamigahara Shimin Kyujou, and a bunch of guys in stripey pants and caps play there. 😛 LOL, that’s the extent of my baseball knowledge! Sorry! If I had to guess, I’d say it was the local Kakamigahara City team, but you never know, there’s a big Kawasaki plant here, so maybe their team uses it.
Gotta love technology today Nick …. i spend ‘waste?’ a lot of time on Google Earth ….. google earth hacks has some great locations to explore.
Nice find, Neil! I’ve seen the wayward missile hurtling through the U.S, and the camels in Africa before, but GEarthHacks.com will keep me busy for hours! Thanks! 🙂