Takayama Old Town

This article is based on a visit made on Friday, 18 May 2018.

Previously on Sekai Ichi, I visited the Showa-kan museum in Takayama.  The museum stands on the edge of one of Takayama's main draws, its old town.  Formally known as the Sanmachi Historical Houses Preservation District (三町伝統的建造物群保存地区, Sanmachi Dentouteki Kinzoubutsugun Hozon Chigu), the old town is a neighbourhood of homes and shops, some of which have been standing since the Edo period (1601-1868).

The old town is located on the east side of the Miya River (宮川, Miya-gawa).  One of Takayama's two popular morning markets, the Miyagawa Morning Market, is set up every morning along the riverside, just north of the old town area.  But since it's the afternoon, let's move on to where the real action is.

The action in the old town is centred around three parallel streets.  Some of the buildings are private homes, but many others are shops which specialise in all manner of foods, crafts, and sake, a.k.a. nihonshu (日本酒, lit. 'Japanese liquor').  Like the Higashi Chaya district in Kanazawa, I found that the similar building styles and Japanese signage tends to make each business blend into the next, but the wider variety of businesses does help each to stand out a bit.

One object you'll see lots of in Takayama is the sugidama (杉玉, lit. 'cedar ball'), a common decoration found in front of sake-related businesses.  They are made of cedar branches and leaves, the same tree whose wood was traditionally used to make casks for fermenting liquor.  They are coloured green when made in the winter, and turn brown later on in the year, when the sake has aged enough and is ready to drink.

Numerous sake shops in Takayama offer samples for a low cost.  The sample shown above is umeshu (lit. 'plum liquor').  For obvious reasons, only those who are of drinking age in Japan (20 years old) and who are not planning to drive anytime soon need apply.

One of the other sake breweries in the area even sells sake-flavoured ice cream!  If the alcoholic bite of the real thing is too much for you to handle, this is a good way to experience it with a more mellow sweetness.  The same age restrictions apply for the ice cream, just to be on the safe side.

Looking for something more substantial?  Hida beef, along with the more famous Kobe beef, is one of the most prestigious varieties of wagyu (和牛, lit. 'Japanese cattle'), and Takayama is the best place to try it out.  One of the most accessible places to try out Hida beef is a nikuman, or steamed beef bun, from Kihachiro Beef Bun, whose signboard is shown above.  Kihachiro also has additional stores as far away as Kyoto and Kamakura.

Sugidama aren't the only creative signage to be found here.  This soba restaurant incorporates some noodles draped over a pair of chopsticks.

And in front of another place, I came across this animatronic puppet.  Simply put, you never know what you'll find out here!

Case in point, I found a chopsticks shop where I was able to get my name printed on a pair of my own.

Making this moment even more special, I also got a ¥2,000 note back with my change.  This denomination was first printed, appropriately enough, in the year 2000, but is rarer to come across than the other bills (¥1,000, ¥5,000, and ¥10,000).  In that sense, it's a lot like the US $2 bill, although closer in value to $20.

Not every business in the old town is steeped in tradition.  My grandmother was drawn into a shop that specialised in tomato juice and similar products.  The store itself gave off a hipsterish schoolhouse vibe.

We came across that place while we were searching for some place where we could get a rickshaw ride.  It took some searching, but we found one.  Our guide for the ride spoke enough English -- not that much according to her, but suitable enough for me -- to give us insights that helped us enjoy the neighbourhood even more.  She was even willing and able to take a couple of pictures of us, one of which I've used for my sign-off above.  If you'd like a rickshaw ride for yourself, expect to pay ¥5,000 for 30 minutes, but if you can get a shorter and cheaper course like we did, you'll still get your money's worth.  As for us, there was one more city we made a stop at on our way back to Tokyo.  Find out where, next time on Sekai Ichi!

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Access: From the Takayama Bus Centre, take the Machinami loop bus to Sanmachi-dori (さんまち通り, ¥100), in the middle of the old town.  The Counterclockwise route takes 9 minutes to get to this stop, while the Clockwise route takes 24 minutes.

You can also reach the area in about 10 minutes on foot from Takayama Station.  Turn right out of the station's East Exit, then take the next left at the traffic light.  Continue on up the main road for about 850m (½ mile).  After crossing the river, you will have arrived in the old town.

Kihachiro

Hours: Open from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM.  Closed on Wednesdays.

Address: 35 Kamisannomachi, Takayama-shi, Gifu-ken 〒506-0845

Website: (Japanese)

Takayama Showa-kan

This article is based on a visit made on Friday, 18 May 2018.

Previously on Sekai Ichi, I visited the Sakurayama Hachiman shrine, home to a museum about the city's semi-annual festivals.  Its location proved to be a fine starting point for walking into another of Takayama's most famous attractions, the old town.  However, on the way there, we stopped at a museum offering a more recent slice of history: the Takayama Showa-kan (高山昭和館) museum.

What is Showa?  In Japan, the reign of each Emperor is given a unique title, which is also bestowed upon that Emperor himself after his death.  For example, the reign that started this year (2019) is called the Reiwa era (令和, lit. 'fair peace').  The Showa era (昭和, lit. 'enlightened peace'), then, was the period ruled over by Emperor Hirohito, lasting from 1926 to 1989.  This holds the record for the longest reign of a Japanese Emperor, and indeed, much happened to Japan during these 64 years, some of it infamously unfortunate.  But most Japanese who were alive back then associate Showa more strongly with its post-war half, from the mid-1950s on, when the country embraced democracy and capitalism, and its economy grew at a meteoric rate.

The halls of this museum are done up to resemble a cityscape that may have been seen in 1955 or so, and are lined with rooms which re-create different kinds of homes or businesses.  The car seen above is a Daihatsu Midget, a three-wheeled mini-truck first manufactured in 1957.  They came in one-seater and two-seater varieties; the model in this museum is the latter, and you can even sit inside it.

This room is the living quarters behind a general store; the store's counters are out of frame.  It would be interesting to compare these to the model homes in, say, the Fukugawa Edo Museum.  Maybe this is just one room out of many in the house, maybe it isn't.  Living standards had certainly improved since the Edo period, but space has always been precious in urban Japan.  One thing's for sure: there was a wider variety of stuff available in the Showa period.  The TV in back plays a loop of vintage shows, and there is a shogi (a Japanese strategy game which evolved from chess) board which these two 21st-century ladies are happily chatting over.

Moving on to the restaurant, and -- hel-lo, whom do we have up there...?

I'll try to ignore that temptation, and instead take a closer look at the food models adorning the restaurant's shopfront, which is common in Japan even today.  The advent of plastic manufacturing gave restaurateurs the ability share their menus beyond the barriers of language.  I, and many others, I'm sure, are thankful for that.

One of the rooms you can enter from the main hall is an appliance store.  Electric appliances like these became status symbols of the post-war Japanese.  Junichiro Koizumi, the Prime Minister from 2001-2006, compared the most sought-after home goods of a given time to the three treasures that make up the Imperial Regalia of Japan; for example, the washing machine, refrigerator, and black-and-white TV.  I mentioned this comparison in detail before, on my article on the Edo Tokyo Museum.

Next door is a toy store.  I described the evolution of Japanese toy trends in another article, on the Arima Toys and Automata Museum.  The collection on display here encapsulates the transition period I described then.

The second floor offers more to explore, such as rooms from a private home and a school.  I honestly doubt that every student in a given class would use their own typewriter, but having them here does help to show the evolution of technology that took place during this time.

Speaking of technology, video games also helped define the late Showa period.  Japanese arcade games like Space Invaders and Pac-Man became worldwide phenomena in the late '70s and early '80s, and Nintendo and Sega both launched their first home consoles in 1983.  Here, on the second floor of the Showa-kan, you can play on a couple of Nintendo's Famicom and Super Famicom systems.  (The latter was actually launched in 1990, after the Showa period ended, but... eh, close enough.)

However, an even more widespread pasttime in Japan, both then and now, is pachinko (パチンコ).  To play, you shoot little metal marbles into a vertical board lined with pegs.  The balls bounce around these pegs on their way down, and if they fall into the right holes, you'll get additional balls to keep playing with.  It bears resemblance to pinball, but the player's only control is how rapidly the balls are shot into play.  The balls you earn can be exchanged for prizes, and even though most gambling is illegal in Japan, there is a booming grey market of exchanging those prizes back for cash.  At the Showa-kan, you can try out some old-style pachinko machines for free.  No prizes, though.  As for the real thing, pachinko parlours are very widespread across Japan, but the experience of being in one is extremely loud, like a casino on steroids.  I think I'll stick to video game centres if that's all the same to you.

Or, I could just go out and visit Takayama's old town.  Join me there, next time on Sekai Ichi!

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Hours: Open from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM.  No regular closing days.

Cost: ¥800.

Address: 6 Shimo-Ichinomachi, Takayama-shi, Gifu-ken 〒506-0858

Access: From the Takayama Bus Centre, take the Machinami loop bus to Betsu-in Temple (別院前) (¥100).  The Counterclockwise route takes 11 minutes to get to this stop, while the Clockwise route takes 21 minutes.  From the bus stop, head west, downhill along the main road, and take the third right, at the traffic light.  The museum will soon be on your left.

You can also reach the museum in about 15 minutes on foot from Takayama Station.  Turn left out of the station's East Exit, then take the second right at the traffic light.  Continue on up the main road for about 850m (½ mile).  After crossing the river, turn left at the next traffic light.  The museum will soon be on your left.

Website: (English) (Japanese)

Nomura Samurai House

This article is based on a visit made on Thursday, 17 May 2018.

Previously on Sekai Ichi, I visited the Nagamachi samurai district in Kanazawa, starting with the Shinise Memorial Museum, a former merchant's home.  As much as I enjoyed that place, it is perhaps not an ideal representation of what Nagamachi is all about.  But I sought to correct that image by heading deeper into the neighbourhood.

The samurai, the warrior class of Edo-era Japan, were given preferential treatment by the ruling daimyo lords.  Samurai were the only caste who were allowed to own swords, and were paid in large sums of rice, which was used as currency in that time.  In Kanazawa, the lords of the Maeda clan set up homes for them in this location near the castle.  This system went on until 1871, near the start of the Meiji era.  Whilst not many original samurai houses remain, their families having sold the land for other development, recent efforts have been made to preserve what is left.

The canal running through here served both as a moat to protect the area, and to channel supply boats to and from the port.  The walls are built in layers of bamboo, gravel, and mud.  In the winter, they are protected further by an additional layer of straw cladding, known as komokake (薦掛け, lit. 'hanging straw').  Between this and the pine tree supports over in Kenroku-en, the people of Kanazawa take snow preparation seriously.  And with the kind of weather this place gets, I can imagine why.

Nagamachi may not match the scale or degree of preservation of Kyoto's Higashiyama district (i.e. you'll still see some overhead power lines here), but still boasts a few pleasant alleyways to explore.  Mind you, most of the older buildings here are private homes with nothing to offer the average traveller besides aesthetics.

That said, Nagamachi still punches hard with a few museums documenting the area in its glory days, which brings me to the focus of this article: the Nomura family house (野村家, Nomura-ke).  The Nomura family was one of the wealthier samurai families of the area, earning a yearly salary of 1,000 to 2,200 koku of rice (equivalent to 71-157 million yen / 0.66-1.455 million US dollars in 2019) and possessing a homestead of 3,300 m² at their peak.  When the feudal system was abolished, this plot was passed around multiple owners and eventually sold to the city of Kanazawa, which re-opened it as a public museum.

The largest room in the house is the drawing room, or jodan-no-ma (上段の間, lit. 'raised-floor room').  It is blocked off, but visible from the adjoining rooms.

One of those rooms has a gilded Buddhist altar recessed in the far wall.

The Nomuras' wealth shows in the many artistic details adorning the place, such as these carved panels above the sliding doors.

The rooms on the first floor look out upon a small private garden.  Given the relative size of this garden, the Nomuras must have been very wealthy back in the day.  Today's visitors may only look out onto the garden and not step into it, but it is as dense as all get-out, especially in this season.

The garden also incorporates a pond, sourced from the canals outside, where a few golden carp had swum out to greet us.

Some of the doorways, such as this one leading up to the second floor, are small and short, so taller people -- even yours truly -- will have to take care crossing them.  But once you're past those, a teahouse operates on the second floor, allowing visitors to savour a cup of green tea for only ¥300.  However, at that time the place was booked by a school group on a field trip.  Not that I minded so much, since I already got to experience a cup at Kenroku-en earlier that day, but I still couldn't explore this floor as much as I wanted to.

Also included among the manor's grounds is a small museum.  Its name, the Onikawa Bunko (鬼川文庫, lit. "ogre river library"), refers to the Onikawa irrigation canal, which in turn referred to an oni spirit that was deified nearby.  The museum holds a collection of swords, letters, and other objects d'art pertaining to the Nomura family and the Maeda daimyo clan.

These are examples of mon (文), Japanese coins used from the 14th to 19th centuries.  Like the concurrent Chinese wen and Korean mun, mon coins all had holes in the centre, allowing them to be strung together in bundles.  Some merchants would offer slight discounts when paid in strung-together mon.  Even today, the 5 and 50 yen coins retain holes like these.

I found the Nomura House in particular to be a bit of a tourist trap.  There’s not an awful lot of specific things to see, or room to move around in, especially around the otherwise-pretty garden.  At least, it seemed that way with how many guests we had to pass by.  I actually preferred the Shinise Memorial Hall, as I wrote about previously.  Of course, my experience may not be the same as yours.  Perhaps you might visit at a different time of day and get fewer crowds, and then it may feel just as serene as intended.  Until then, I'll just try my luck at our last stop for the day: the Higashi Chaya district, next time on Sekai Ichi!

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Hours: Open from 8:30 AM to 5:30 PM, or until 4:30 PM between October and March.  Admission ends 30 minutes before closing time.  Closed on 26-27 December and 1-2 January.

Costs: ¥550.

Address: 1-3-32 Nagamachi, Kanazawa-shi, Ishikawa-ken 〒920-0865

Access: The Nomura House is 5 minutes on foot from the Korinbo bus stop.  From Kanazawa Station, take the Kanazawa Left Loop bus, the Kenrokuen Shuttle, or a JR bus to Korinbo (10 minutes, ¥200).

Directions: From Korinbo, walk north and turn left at the 2nd traffic light, the Korinbo Ni-chome (香林坊二丁目) intersection.  Walk down to the end of the road, turn left, then right.  The museum will be on your left at the next crossing.

From the Shinise Memorial Museum, simply head left (facing away from the building) along the canal for 200m (650 ft.), about 2 minutes.  Turn right at the second crossing along, and the Nomura House will be on your right.

Website: (Japanese/English)

Shinise Memorial Museum

This article is based on a visit made on Thursday, 17 May 2018.

Previously on Sekai Ichi, I visited Kanazawa, going from the Kenroku-en garden straight to the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art.  From old to new, our next destination took us back to Kanazawa's old side.  I led my grandmother and myself due west to Nagamachi, a former samurai district.  I shall go more in-depth into Nagamachi in the next article, but for now, let us focus on the museum which met us at the entrance to this neighbourhood: the Shinise Memorial Hall (老舗記念館, Shinise Kinen-kan).

Nagamachi (長町) was set up during the early 17th century as a neighbourhood for the samurai class to live, due to its proximity to Kanazawa Castle.  Whilst the samurai thrived during the Edo period, their fortunes fell upon entering the Meiji era in the mid-19th century, having lost many of their privileges amidst the sweeping societal reforms.  It was in that power vacuum that the status of merchant class rose, which brings us to the Nakaya family.

The Nakayas were the owners of a medicine shop which served the lords of the Maeda clan since 1579.  Three centuries later, they set up this new building as a pharmacy, which was eventually donated to the city of Kanazawa and turned into a public museum.  As you enter, you will first walk along the storefront (みせの間, mise no ma), which has been re-created to appear as it would have back in the Meiji era.

Along the way, you will also see the tools and ingredients used in traditional Chinese medicine, as was made by this shop.  From left to right, the jars here contain rubber tree (トチュウ, tochū), dried viper (ハンピ, hanpi), bishop's hat flowers (インヨウカク, in'yōkaku), turmeric (ウコン, ukon), cinnamon (ケイヒ, keihi), and cloves (チョウジ, chōji).

Directly behind the storefront is the lounge or living room (おえの間, oe no ma).  Merchant's houses like these made room for both the shop and the living quarters of its proprietors.

Behind the lounge and other rooms is a small, but pleasant garden to look out upon.

The second floor of this building showcases different regional crafts.  For example, there is a whole room devoted to temari (てまり/手まり, lit. "hand ball"), hand-sized cloth balls with intricate fabric patterns.  The ones made around Kanazawa are called Kaga temari (加賀てまり), named after the former Kaga domain which covered this area during the feudal ages.  Originally, temari were used to play games, but it soon became fashionable to craft them for display, with embroidery and finer materials.  In Kanazawa, there is a tradition of mothers donating a temari to their daughters upon marriage.

Another decorative craft associated with weddings is the mizuhiki (水引, lit. 'pulled water'), the cords that are tied around wedding gift packages.  The level of detail on some of these, especially the one shaped like a pair of fish, seem like origami on steroids!

Think I'm joking?  Here's a close-up!

And if you thought that was amazing, this tree was made entirely out of candy.  Now that's dandy!
(Lame rhyme is lame.  I apologise.)

The rotating exhibition during my visit showcased even more crafts which Kanazawa is famous for.  One of its most renowned exports is lacquerware with gold-leaf foil.  They can make just about anything with this stuff, from mirrors to trays to sword scabbards.

And here are some tools and techniques that go into making gold leaf.  Pure gold is melted with certain other minerals (right) to create the desired tones, and then pounded into sheets of a near-microscopic thickness, usually around 0.1 to 0.125 micrometres (4-5 millionths of an inch) [1].  The sheets of gold are laid in between sheets of parchment (upper left), which is one of the best materials for withstanding the many blows dealt during the beating process.  The resulting product is so delicate that just touching a pounded sheet could be enough to melt it with one's body heat, so chopstick-like tongs (lower-left) are used to handle them.

I thought I'd end on another shot of temari, just for my grandmother.  All in all, the Shinise Memorial Museum was a low-key yet pleasant museum.  Compared to the more famous Nomura samurai house, we had this place almost all to ourselves.  That may not always be the case, and there isn’t as much room to move around should it be so, but our impression was exceedingly pleasant.  Still, if you want to see what the Nomura house was like, along with the rest of Nagamachi, join me next time on Sekai Ichi!

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Hours: Open from 9:30 AM to 5:00 PM.  Admission ends 30 minutes before closing time.  No regular closing days.

Costs: ¥100.

Address: 2-2-45 Nagamachi, Kanazawa-shi, Ishikawa-ken 〒920-0865

Access: The Shinise Memorial Museum is 5 minutes on foot from the Korinbo bus stop.  From Kanazawa Station, take the Kanazawa Left Loop bus, the Kenrokuen Shuttle, or a JR bus to  Korinbo (10 minutes, ¥200).

Directions: From Korinbo, walk south and turn right at the next traffic light, the Nichigin-mae (日銀前) intersection.  Walk down to the end of the road, turn left, then right.  Continue straight to the end of this road, crossing a small bridge along the way.  The museum is off to the left along the intersecting road.

Website: (English) (Japanese)

[1] Vilfranc, Jenifer M.  "Thickness of Gold Leaf".  The Physics Factbook.  1999, retrieved 4 June 2019.  https://hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/JeniferVilfranc.shtml

Hakone Checkpoint Museum

This article is based on a visit made on Saturday, 12 May 2018.

Edit 10 October 2019: Updated prices to reflect the increase in Japan's national sales tax.


Back in the Edo Period, well before the development of modern railroads or automobiles, if you wanted to travel long-distance across Japan, you would have to do so on foot.  The Tokugawa Shogunate set up five routes from Edo (modern-day Tokyo) to other major cities.  The most-travelled one was the Tokaido (東海道, Tōkaidō, lit. 'eastern sea road'), which led from Edo to Kyoto along the coast of the Pacific Ocean.  The Tokaido was lined with post towns for lodging, and checkpoints to control the flow of traffic.  And in 2007, the Hakone Checkpoint (箱根関所, Hakone Sekisho) was rebuilt as a museum.

Just as the old post towns were full of lodgings for weary travellers to spend the night, the short road leading up to the Checkpoint Museum is also lined with shops that look more vintage than they probably are.  Still, if you're looking for something authentically local, I recommend wooden boxes and other crafts inlaid with parquetry, a specialty of Hakone.  One of the places along this avenue, the Sekisho Karakuri Museum (関所からくり美術館, Sekisho Karakuri Hakubutsukan, not pictured), displays and sells these kinds of creations.

Within the museum's buildings, there are mannequins set up to depict the people who would have ran the checkpoint.  The guards who would have worked here needed a place to stay, so they would cook their meals over irori (囲炉裏) firepits like these.

The old Tokaido passed through multiple provinces, and at each of those border crossings, you had to have a permit in order to cross from one to the other.  It may sound hard to understand these days; can you imagine if you had to break out your passport every time you crossed into a new prefecture on the Shinkansen?  But yeah, Japan wasn't unified like it is now until the 1800s; before then, the regional governments ruled by the shoguns had more powers of their own.  Hakone was one such checkpoint, so it needed an armoury well-stocked with guns, bows, and other weapons of the time.

Didn't have your papers in order?  Well, then, you would get locked up.  Today's visitors can climb into one of the on-site jail cells, and more importantly, climb out.

Behind the buildings, you can climb up a hill to this guard tower.

The hill has a commanding view over the checkpoint, as well as Lake Ashi.

 And guess what?  I got to see Mount Fuji yet again from my new vantage point!

The Ancient Cedar Road, a section of the Old Tokaido between Hakone-machi and Moto-Hakone.
By Daderot [CC0], from Wikimedia Commons

If you have more time than I, there are sections of the old Tokaido which has been preserved for people today to hike along.  Not far from the Checkpoint Museum, a 500m section of the path, attractively lined by cedar trees, follows the modern road up to the port at Moto-Hakone.  Beyond that, an even longer preserved section (3km / 2 miles) can be hiked.  Halfway along this section is a teahouse, the Amazake-chaya (甘酒茶屋, lit. 'sweet sake teahouse'), named after the hot rice wine it specialises in.

My sign-off selfie comes from the jail cell at the Checkpoint Museum.  Little did I know, I was serving my time pre-emptively.  When we tried to get the bus back to Odawara Station, I panicked when I read that it didn't stop in front of the museum.  As I learned after the fact, and wrote below, I didn't know we were supposed to walk down a bit to the station at Hakone-machi.  But luckily, there was another bus from a different company headed the same way.  Our Hakone Free Pass wasn't good on it, but it got us there in good time.  My ever-religious grandmother gave thanks to God for providing for us; I extended the praise also to Buddha, Amaterasu, and the CEO of Izu-Hakone Transport.  Just to cover my bases.

This wraps up my brief stay in Hakone.  In the coming days, look forward to a new Know Your Trains, a kabuki-themed hotel room in Kyoto, and the city of ninja, all on Sekai Ichi!

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Hakone Checkpoint Museum

Hours: Open from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM; closes at 4:30 PM from December through February.  Admission ends 30 minutes before closing.  No regular closing days.

Costs: ¥500, or ¥400 with an active Hakone Free Pass.

Address: 1 Hakone, Hakone-machi, Ashigara Shimo-gun, Kanagawa-ken 〒250-0521

Access: From Hakone-Yumoto (platform 2), take the Hakone-Machi (H) line bus to Hakone Sekisho-ato ("箱根関所跡", 35 minutes, 4 per hour, ¥980).  Alternately, the Hakone-Shindo (R) line is faster, but less frequent (22 minutes, 1-2 per hour, ¥980). The Hakone Free Pass fully covers these buses.

Note: When returning to Hakone-Yumoto or Odawara, the Hakone-Shindo bus does NOT stop at Hakone Sekisho-ato; you will have to walk down to the Hakone-machi bus stop, only 3 minutes downhill on foot.

If you do not care about using the Hakone Free Pass, you can also take Izu-Hakone's Hakone Sekisho (Z) line bus to Hakone Sekisho-ato (40 minutes, 2 per hour, ¥980).  Their bus stop is in the parking lot to the left of the alley leading to the Checkpoint Museum. When returning, the faster Bypass (B) line does depart from the same bus stop (17 minutes, 1 per hour, ¥980), but some services skip Hakone-Yumoto en route to Odawara Station (35 minutes, ¥1,200).

Website: (English) (Japanese)

Sekisho Karakuri Museum

Hours: Open from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM.  No regular closing days.

Address: 17 Hakone, Hakone-machi, Ashigarashimo-gun, Kanagawa-ken 〒250-0521

Directions: From the Hakone Sekisho-ato bus stop, on the short road heading to the Checkpoint Museum, the Karakuri Museum is the second building on the right.

Website: (Japanese)