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.