Balloon Journey Japan Balloon Journey Japan Some places are worth rearranging a whole flight for. Catch the right wind and the cloud sea parts over Fuji, a gorge closes in around you, a hundred balloons come up off a riverbed at first light. Here are seven of them — and getting there is the good part.
FUJI The one mountain everyone can name, and the only thing tall enough to still be there when a cloud sea has swallowed the rest of the country.
VIEW →
KITA-ALPS Three thousand metres of ridge running north to south, with valleys between them that hold their own weather and their own wind.
VIEW →
KUROBE A V-shaped cut so deep and so narrow that the wind inside it runs a different way from the wind above it.
VIEW →
ASO A crater twenty-five kilometres wide with towns, rice fields and a railway inside it — and an active volcano in the middle.
VIEW →
IBURI Fields, rivers and scattered towns laid out with a straightness the rest of Japan does not have — the first place the game's terrain pipeline was pointed at.
VIEW →
SETOUCHI A sea with hundreds of islands in it, held between three of Japan's four main islands — calm water, mild weather, and a horizon full of shapes.
VIEW →
SAGA Every autumn a hundred balloons lift off one riverbed at first light. It is the largest ballooning event in Asia, and it is a real place you can fly to.
VIEW → Screenshots are from a build in progress and are not necessarily taken at the place described.
Terrain is built from elevation data published by the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan (GSI).
One email when the beta opens, one when the game is out.