A miniature city from up on high

by Justin Delaney on


From high above the city, jusojin captured this time-lapse AND tilt-shift video that miniaturizes the bustling city of Osaka, Japan. Trivializing every aspect of the Osaka hustle provides a toyish cityscape where people are reduced to ants and cars look like turbocharged micro machines in a lavish play-set.

Jusojin shot the video from the roof of the Umeda Sky Building – a two towered structure that boasts a sky garden called the “Floating Garden Observatory,” and an underground market designed to resemble the Osaka of a century ago. With modernity clashing with old school Japan in such a cool location, the 40 floor skyscraper is a must visit in Osaka.

Time Lapse (Umeda Sky Building2011) HD from jusojin on Vimeo.

In Transit TV on the hostel’s demographic

by Grant Martin on

Every budget traveler has been there before, the tired, dusty hostel, the new group of road weary travelers and the parallels, the parallels the parallels. Suffering from the shockingly high hotel prices in Moscow years back, Gadling Labs ended up at a hostel that just wasn’t stirring our kettle. No surprise, a tenacious young Australian wooing Japanese girls with his guitar, a few drunken Western Europeans, a crowded computer terminal and two tired Americans dodging mosquitoes and shots of vodka.

Some good gentle teasing of the hostel clientele is summed up pretty well in In Transit TV‘s dispatch from last year. While it’s mostly in jest — which only makes it more endearing — it’s an interesting narrative on hostel culture and a clip well worth the click. Take a look below.


The Ultimate Road Trip Detour: Go Kart Racing?

by Paul Brady on


At the outset of this road trip, I invited friends and readers to jump in the car with me. After more than a month on the road, one of my buddies finally took me up on the offer, planning to meet me in Virginia Beach after I toured Colonial Williamsburg.

I’ve known Rob for more than 10 years, and while we get along wonderfully, we love competition. So it being a road trip, there was no better place to spar than on a go kart track.

Traveling the American Road – Go Kart Racing


By a fantastic coincidence, Virginia Beach Motor World has a loop inspired by Watkins Glen International, a place I’d visited earlier this summer–and driven on the pro-level track. It wasn’t an exact replica, but I planned to put some of my driving experience in Upstate New York to good use in Virginia.

Rob and I have raced before, in Chile of all places, in super-speedy karts that required helmets. Splitting a few races this time around, we still haven’t determined a champion. We’re hoping to do that when we get to the Orlando Kart Center. But first we have a stop to make in the Outer Banks.

Colonial Williamsburg: Made in America

by Paul Brady on


The last time I visited Colonial Williamsburg, I was about half as tall as I am now. Would it still be worth seeing-or as fantastic as I remembered-now that I’m a grown up? I drove south from Washington, D.C. to find out, without doing a lick of planning or advance research. This would be a visit informed only by my fuzzy memories of hiking around in the heat and talking to people dressed in period costumes.

It turned out to be just as cool as I remembered, even if it was nearly 100 degrees.

Traveling the American Road – Colonial Williamsburg: Made in America


The city spans 301 acres, and it’s accurate to describe it as a village, since people actually live here around the clock. Staffers occupy buildings in the historic section and artisans working in Williamsburg create the tools, clothing and even beer that’s needed on site. While it sounds like a marketing line, it’s true that this place is much more than a theme park. It’s a sort of living museum, and what they’re preserving is the knowledge and history of small-scale American manufacturing and handicraft.

Take the milliner’s shop, where I met a tailor who’d been apprenticing for seven years, showing off a dress crafted in 60 hours of stitching. I learned about movable type from a printer, probably running one of the most profitable presses in the country, given the current state of publishing. A youngster was talking the trade with a blacksmith, the former an avid hobbyist in the art of mashing metals, picking up tips from the professional. A wheelwright described how to build an ox cart. (They can last years as long as you scoop the manure out and bring it in from the rain.)

As I’ve found stories of resurgent places, the made in America element of Williamsburg captivated me in its historic rather than innovative focus. In other words, there’s a difference between Korean tacos and hand-hammering a pewter cup. But by quietly building things by hand, the craftsmen and women of Williamsburg are doing something very, very cool-and something I didn’t have the chance to appreciate as a kid.

One wild year in Banff National Park

by Kraig Becker on

Banff National Park, located in the the Rocky Mountains of Alberta, Canada, is a truly wild place. But I’m not sure anyone knew just exactly how wild it is, until the park launched its remote wildlife camera project last year. The project stationed a number of webcams throughout the park, allowing visitors to check in on the various sites from the comfort of their own homes.

Now, the park has released a whole year’s worth of videos and images from one of those cameras, demonstrating the diversity of wildlife that wanders by on a regular basis. In the video, which you’ll find below, you’ll be able to spot plenty of deer and elk, but also bear, moose, wolves, mountain lions, and a whole lot more. There are even a few people who wander by on foot or mountain bike, and there were at least two groups of pack horses that passed by too.

It is a pretty amazing video that begins with a date stamp of May 31, 2010 and ends at May 30, 2011. In between, there is a whole lot of amazing sights to be seen.