Japan has musical roads!
That’s right, Japan has roads that play a tune as you drive over them, to enhance your journey and driving experience! Well strictly speaking it’s your car that plays the tune, with the road design making it vibrate at different frequencies. I had the pleasure of being driven on the Mount Fuji musical road so I thought I’d tell you about it. Japan doesn’t have the monopoly on this musical road thing: I’ve seen videos of them in the USA also. This was my first musical road encounter!
How does the musical road work?
Ridges in the road cause the tyres, wheels, suspension components etc to vibrate and make a certain note. Changes in the gaps between the ridges change the frequency of vibration and so the pitch of the note. Driving over them at the right speed plays a tune. In this video you may notice the car starts off a little slow but the tune improves as it speeds up.
Video – driving along a section of musical road up to Mt Fuji
Apologies for the poor video quality here – I only had my old camera with me at the time. I hope to have the opportunity to re-record it with some better equipment in the future.
This is on the Fuji Subaru line / road / highway. By the way, if enjoy nice mountain roads, I recommend you drive the whole road as far as you can go. It’s not the finest mountain pass I’ve ever encountered, but it was really enjoyable all the same.
Where exactly is the Mount Fuji musical road?
If you’d like to visit yourself, or perhaps you’re just interested in the location, here’s a map:
If you prefer what 3 words, it’s tragedy.beside.rejoin.
I hope you enjoyed hearing about the Mount Fuji musical road. Let me know if you visit it yourself!
