I Love Living in the Future

[lydamorehouse]

 
Meiji Shrine near Harajuku Station

YOU GUYS, I WAS LITERALLY JUST HERE. (Well, I mean, at least virtually.)



I did the coolest thing just now. I joined a livestream on "Heygo" and walked around the Harajuku neighborhood of Tokyo with a woman named Eriko. She strapped her phone on a selfie stick and walked us around. What was amazing is that because it was live, we could chat with her and say things like, "Hey, what's to your left, Eriko?" and she would tell us. It was very literally like walking around Tokyo with a friend. 

I was not particularly interested at first in the idea of the 'cute culture" of Harajuku. But, it was decidedly delightful to walk down streets filled with small clothing shops, cosplay, etc.


A clothing shop.

Heygo allows you to "take postcards," but that also rather depends on Eriko's willingness to stand still. So I caught this one in motion. What is cool, of course, is that because this is live, we were seeing Japan as people were walking down the street going about their days. I asked her about the weather there and it was a balmy 11 C / 53 F there. No snow, bright blue sky. Other people also popped into chat, there was a long discussion about some punk band? Shounen Knife? Apparently someone wanted to know if they were still playing in Japan. Eriko was very confused (apparently not a punk fan) and wondered if this person was referring to Shounen Jump, which made me happy of course, as Jump is a major manga magazine.

Oh, speaking of, Eriko started us in the most adorable cat cafe that is just off Harajuku Station. We probably spent a good ten minutes of the walk just looking at the cats they had there. The connection is that apparently the cat cafe is like an internet cafe in that there is a library of manga for you to read, we saw that when Eriko went off to show us where the cats had their boxes (apparently, they have a private pass through to a special room for doing their business--but along that wall was the manga library.)

She ended the tour at Tokyo Plaza Omotesando (designed by Hiroshi Nakamura).


The center circle is the actual street view. Very confusing, but cool AF.

Anyway, I ADORED this. This is exactly what I wanted the future to be like when I thought about having to be stuck indoors with the pandemic. (Tagged this entry with "cyberpunk future is not as advertised,: but really, this is getting pretty darned close.)  If I had a better phone, I would totally see if Heygo would hire me to walk around Minneapolis/St. Paul with people. 

I'm so doing this again. On Christmas day, I'll be walking around Mount Fuji. See you later, friends! I'm on a real world tour now!!

Comments

[rachelmanija]

Oh, how wonderful! Where is this?

[yhlee]

https://www.heygo.com/

:) PLEASE tell me if you find a Japan tour that's in the next few days, I only checked Kyoto and Tokyo.

[lydamorehouse]

Yoon and Rachel, here's the Mount Fuji one on Christmas day evening: https://www.heygo.com/tours/mt-fuji-and-lake-kawaguchi JOIN ME!!

And to answer Rachel's question, I found these originally through EventBrite, but you can sign up for them directly on HeyGo. It's not limited to Japan. You can walk around Red Square or Prague or Johannesburg or Cairo with someone: https://www.heygo.com/home

[yhlee]

I've signed up!! :D :D :D Thank you for the link!

[lydamorehouse]

Whoo hoo! I'll post more here when I find good ones. We can all be virtual travel companions.

[yhlee]

This is so cool, thank you for telling us about it!

[lydamorehouse]

It is amazing! It's just the thing to scratch the travel itch as the pandemic rages on.

[kore]

This is amazing!

[lydamorehouse]

It really is and as I was telling Yoon and Rachel, you can have someone walk you around ANYWHERE. I mean, there are probably places they won't go or don't have staff to go, but there are a lot of walking tours and such.

[sabotabby]

Someone in my writers' group is writing a story like this. I think this kind of thing would make me sadder but I'm glad it exists for people who enjoy it.

[lydamorehouse]

Yeah, I get that it might make a person sadder, but because you could directly chat with the person on the other end it made me actually feel connected? I don't know. Maybe the shine will wear off, but for now I'm enjoying the ride.

I think it'd be a helluva part time job, too. Like I said in my post, I would totally do this for someone else! Who wants to go on a walk and look at the Christmas lights in St. Paul! If I knew how to livestream I'd set that up right now!

[sartorias]

Oh, that sounds so awesome! I would totally love to do those.

[lydamorehouse]

Do it! We could all go places, virtually!!

virtual travel

[rafiwinters]

I have an uncle who lives in England, who when I talked to earlier said that he'd been in Paris yesterday and Tokyo today. This amuses me.

Re: virtual travel

[lydamorehouse]

It amuses me, too! The tours are all set up on GMT time, so I was in St. Paul last night, but Tokyo today.

WoW!

[lsanderson]

It looks like it runs on a tip economy to pay the guide. Do you know how that works and what's a good tip?

Re: WoW!

[lydamorehouse]

It works very easily. There is a tip jar button built into the live-stream along with the chat and the "postcard" functions.

I don't know what's a good tip, but I can tell you a lot of people tipped and my friend and I both did around 5-10 bucks. I would say it's whatever you can afford, but when I saw that our hostess had to pay for her 15 minutes in the Cat Cafe, I dropped more money in the jar than I would have. So I think it depends on what they do for you, too?