Tokyo From SpaceAugust 10th, 2009 by Curzon |
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I saw this photo and was rather surprised at how dark the area surrounding Tokyo appeared, but I suppose it makes sense when you consider that about 70% of Japan’s land is uninhabited.
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13 Responses to 'Tokyo From Space'
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August 10th, 2009 at 8:16 pm
Do you have a bigger version?
I once had a really nice view of Tokyo at night from a plance flying out of Kansai (or was it Nagoya?) heading to the US. Looked rather small and insignificant, so much so that my gf didn’t think it could be Tokyo (but it was).
August 10th, 2009 at 11:05 pm
That’s an odd statistic. How do you define uninhabited? Surely there must be people living even in the most inaka inaka?
August 10th, 2009 at 11:05 pm
Any trip 10 klicks outside of Tokyo will tell you that shuttered businesses tend to not shine much light…
August 11th, 2009 at 12:15 am
The hills in Japan tend to be steep and very unpopulated, while everyone crams in on the flat. And Japan has a lot of hills, most of which are forested rather than used for agriculture.
August 11th, 2009 at 12:32 am
Tokyo is South Korea, not-Tokyo is North Korea.
August 11th, 2009 at 3:50 am
Tony:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan#Geography
About 70% to 80% of the country is forested, mountainous,[44][45] and unsuitable for agricultural, industrial, or residential use. This is because of the generally steep elevations, climate and risk of landslides caused by earthquakes, soft ground and heavy rain. This has resulted in an extremely high population density in the habitable zones that are mainly located in coastal areas.
August 11th, 2009 at 3:55 am
Jade: Not really—the original was 700 pixels, I resized it down to 500 for the blog post. I am looking online for a higher resolution version.
August 11th, 2009 at 7:52 am
I saw an interesting comment somewhere that Tokyo is one of the few world cities that glow green at night; most glow orange. This is apparently because they use different chemicals in streetlights here.
August 11th, 2009 at 11:49 am
This page lets you download a night shot of Tokyo in various resolutions. I grabbed the biggest one and stuck it here if you want a quicker way to get at it.
August 11th, 2009 at 11:51 am
There are quite a few shots of Tokyo (in various places around the world!) available on that site, by the way.
August 11th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
Joe – I don’t know about green as such, but one thing that always strikes me about arriving in most overseas cities at night, especially the US, is the orange glow from the streetlights – orange is from sodium-vapor lamps and white is from mercury vapour gas. I hate the sodium ones – very bleak. But they are cheap and more efficient.
Durf – nice photo.
August 11th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
BTW, you can see the difference clearly in the pic – the industrial areas around the bay use sodium, and are orange.
August 12th, 2009 at 3:15 am
Lamps in my home town are mercury vapor, I believe. I’ll confirm next week.