Google Earth is a utility for traveling around the world. But for others, it’s a canvas on which their feet are the paint.
Yasushi “Yassan” Takahashi, a Tokyo resident, knew he planned to propose to his girlfriend, Natsuki. But he wasn’t sure how.
Since marriage proposals are special, Yassan wanted to make it extra memorable for his lover by embarking on a six-month tour across Japan, using Google Earth to track his progress and spell out “Marry Me” with a heart across the country’s map.
Yassan conceived the idea of proposing to his girlfriend, Natsuki, using GPS art in 2008. GPS art, according to Google, is “the act of generating a large-scale digital drawing by traveling along a specified path using a GPS device. A form develops when the route is uploaded to a mapping application such as Google Earth.”
Yassan devised a route across Japan that would spell “Marry Me,” resigned from his work, and set off from Hokkaido to the shores of Kagoshima. The drawing for the grand proposal took him six months and 4,451 miles to complete. Finally, he presented Natsuki with his finished trip on Google Earth in what was possibly one of the most meticulously planned proposals of the year.
Yassan began producing GPS drawings all over the world after the success of his initial idea.
According to his website: “He is a professional GPS artist who has created over 1400 artworks. More than 100,000 kilometers have been drawn in 24 countries.”