Stories from Curious Outsiders

hitotoki : A Narrative Map of Tokyo. (See also New York, London, Paris, Shanghai, and Sofia).

This is one of my favorite sites to visit. What you are presented with is an active Google map of the city with placemarks to identify where each story happens. You also get a few pictures that link to the various stories, as well as text links that quote a line of any given story. The layout is pleasing to the eye and straightforward.

The stories are often, I have found, amazingly well written and I always wind up feeling like I know the place a little more, in a significant way, than I did before. Mind you, I have never been to the majority of these places, yet I have gleaned from these personal recollections and anecdotes what I believe to be a genuine sense of them. This is a wonderful thing.

The site enhances our sense of the greater world “out there”, and it shows us that people are not so different from one place to another, even as it illustrates the differences that do exist.

Highly recommended.