While I was playing around at the zoo, it seems that most of Furano City, including the ski hill area, is now up on google streets. Based on the decoration it looks like the photos were taken over a year ago, but you can still get a really good idea of how close we are to the ski hill (simply rotate the camera 180 degrees!)

I have overlaid our google map of the area, check it out! Just click any of the locations shown on the index to the left. The system will automatically jump to the nearest available viewpoint. You can see exactly where our apartments and Chalet are located, and even take a virtual stroll around the block!

Note: The photo data of this area is over a year old, many signs and storefronts have changed. For example our apartments’ sign has been redone in stainless steel.

This is either really cool or really scary, depending how you look at it. You may have heard of Google Streets, the search engine giant’s somewhat controversial program to provide photo-realistic virtual representation of the world’s streets. They have just added a few local areas including Asahiyama Zoo. You can’t actually go inside the main exhibits, but I was able to get this view of the rhino exhibit.

Maybe because I am in Japan, but I could not get the English interface to come up. In case you are stuck in Japanese:

1. Yellow lines are mapped roads and trails, click the white arrows to move along them
2. Top left controls free zoom and angle
3. Drag the little guy on the bottom right map to move around. When you drag, the available areas are shown in blue outline.
4. Move the mouse over the picture to see other angles available.
5. Click and drag on the picture to freely change the angle 360 degrees. (Each point on the map is actually a full 360-degree panorama!)

大きな地図で見る

If you can’t see the map above, click here to open in a new window.