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Bridges: 20 Live Cameras — seen from the crossing

Twenty cameras with a bridge in them: five down the Arakawa in order, nine over rivers elsewhere, three suspension bridges, three that watch one from away.

What you can see

A bridge can be the place you look from or the thing you look at. Both are called a bridge camera, and they show completely different things.

The five on the Arakawa carry their distance from the river mouth, so they can be put in order towards the sea. Sasame Bridge is at 28.8 km, where Route 17 crosses; from here down, the flood plain stays wide. Shin-Arakawa Bridge is at 21.4 km, with Kita ward of Tokyo opposite, the river itself the boundary. Goshikizakura Bridge is at 17.1 km, a double-decked expressway bridge whose pier lights reach across the water at night. Nishiarai Bridge is at 13.8 km, with tower blocks opposite and their lights on the surface. Hirai Bridge is at 6.4 km, seen low from the levee, so the width of the river fills the frame. Read the five from the top down and you can see the same river widening as it nears the sea.

The nine elsewhere are Ministry river cameras. Hijikawa Bridge is beside the old castle town of Ozu; Nakagawa Bridge is near the mouth at Anan; Chosei Bridge is on the Kuwano, a tributary smaller than the main stream, so its level rises and drops sharply after rain. Tsuga Bridge is on the middle Gono, in a gorge with hills close on both sides. Shintsurumi Bridge is on the Asahi, Asa Bridge is where the Ota comes down to Hiroshima, Shinkawa Bridge is on its tributary the Nenotani, Bishamon Bridge is on the upper Gono in Hiroshima prefecture, and the Saba camera is 6.4 km from the mouth, near the town of Hofu.

The three suspension bridges are bridges people cross for the crossing's sake. Kappa-bashi hangs over the Azusa with the Hotaka range standing beyond it, and the number of people on the deck tells you how busy Kamikochi is that day. In Taiwan, the Taiping Suspension Bridge is 280 m long and looks down from a 1,000 m ridge over the Chianan plain and its sea of cloud. At Shitoushan, the Xiaomaopu suspension bridge crosses in front of the 72 m Maitreya on its headland.

On the three seen from away the bridge is the subject. Rainbow Bridge is seen across Tokyo Bay from Odaiba, with the towers of the city behind it. From Mount Washu, the Great Seto Bridge and the islands overlap. At the north end of Togetsukyo, the queue crossing the bridge and the boats on the river are in one frame.

Cameras you can watch now: 20

14 video, 6 still. Tap one to open it in the camera list.

When to watch

The fourteen river cameras work best after rain. A bridge sits at a fixed height above the water, so the gap between girder and surface is a ruler for the level. Decisions about evacuating belong to your local authority; these cameras are for looking.

The five on the Arakawa refresh every minute, so opening them repeatedly in one day follows the movement of the water.

Goshikizakura and Rainbow Bridge are worth seeing at night too: the pier lights of one reach out over the water, and at the other sea and sky go the same colour at sunset. Most of the other cameras show nothing once it is dark.

Two of the three suspension bridges are in Taiwan, one hour behind Japan: noon in Taiwan is one in the afternoon in Japan, with no daylight saving.

None of the sources publishes a best season for these bridges, so this page does not set one either.

If it isn't showing

The sources are the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (the Arakawa Downstream River Office and the Shikoku and Chugoku regional bureaus), the Ministry of the Environment, Gosenjaku Hotel Kamikochi, the Alishan and Tri-Mountain National Scenic Area Administrations in Taiwan, the Kyoto City Tourism Association and FNN Prime Online. Rainbow Bridge and Togetsukyo carry no sample picture, because neither source allows images to be copied; How to use this site, and where it comes from has the detail.

Each river and place is covered in full on its own page: The Arakawa (five), The Hijikawa River, The Naka River (Nakagawa and Chosei), The Gono River (Tsuga and Bishamon), The Asahi River System, The Ota River System (Asa and Shinkawa), The Saba River, Kamikochi (Kappa-bashi), Taiping Bridge & Lijia, Emei Lake, Shitoushan, The Seto Inland Sea (Mount Washu) and Arashiyama and Sagano (Togetsukyo).

Where the tide reaches up a river mouth is on Tides; all the river cameras are under River.

Where to find Bridges

Agencies publishing the cameras on this page

The footage belongs to each agency. This site is an unofficial guide, and each sample frame was copied once per camera under that agency's terms of use.

To find other cameras, go to the camera list. You can narrow all 439 cameras by format, region, subject and provider.