Zoom, zoom

My last day in Yokohama I decided to see a zoo with more area to work with--which tends to mean more natural enclosures. The Yokohama Zoo Zooasia is a wonderful zoo that has a far better design than most zoos.

Most zoos fall prey to a classic landscape architecture problem: Paths that branch into two are pleasing to the eye and fun to wander. However, this leads to a problem: if an odd number of paths meet at a point, then it is impossible to cover all of the paths without retracing some of your path.

The Yokohama Zoo has found a great solution to this conundrum (similar to those paths found by optimization methods in Operations Research.) First, build a single path around the zoo intended to be followed that in one goaround allows all the animals to be seen. Second, build in shortcuts across the main path where there are no animals to be seen, but allows visitors to bypass sections of the main route should they desire. The result: a park that for once makes sense and is a joy to walk along.

And the animals are cute too. Earlier I extolled the virtues of the red panda, but the Japanese Macaques have the baby factor going for them.



Next stop was the bullet train--the shinkansen. This was a joy to ride: five minutes after buying my ticket, I was shooting my way towards Kyoto at near 300 km/hr speeds. Still the ride was smoother than an airplane, and you have more legroom to boot. Definitely a nice way to travel.