Poetic steampunk flight, by a Victorian Japanese

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

Japanese steampunk creator Yooma Mayo is probably best known for his whimsical bicycles and the delightful steam-powered monorail that transports you from the ground up to his cliff-perched shop in Second Life®, YGD.


Bryn Oh zipped up the monorail on a recent visit with me

In Real Life, Yooma likes to fly kites - the dual-line kind - so when he learned of human aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal's glider, he determined that he had to make his own. Virtually. The irony is that Yooma is afraid of heights but joined Second Life because, "I wanted to talk with people from other countries, use "build tools," and fly in the sky."


Lilienthal (1848-1886) in flight

The resulting virtual Courant d'Air glider is a thing of beauty and heaps of fun to use and fly.



Both photos by Katati Noel, for whom Yooma created a "special edition."



You can visit his YGD shop by teleporting directly from here to Winterfell Anodine, a Caledonian sim where, according to Yooma, "The street and the scenery there seen from the sky are beautiful. When I looked for the land for my new shop, I knew that it was the place. Now, I have built my first shop in a "foreign country."

Special thanks to Yooma's friend, Katati Noel, for alerting us to this and for the use of her photos.