14 November 2024
The main show out of town
Fukui prefectural dinosaur museum
First of all, prefectural is not actually a real word, dictionaries list it as a bastardisation of English commonly used in Japan.
Secondly, today was the worst farmers smoke I have ever experienced. I am so glad I made sure to separate my recycling into 3 bins at the cafe - yes I know this is a joke assholes do, but also, farmers need to stop burning plastic mixed with dead leaves, old tyres and asbestos. I could smell smoke inside the train for the entire journey.
The museum itself is over 30km out of Fukui city, first you take the Echizen railway to the last stop at Katsuyama. No one gets off at any of the 20 stations between Fukui and Katsuyama, except me, 2 days ago. Anyway, you then transfer to a dinosaur themed bus, that is waiting at the station and coordinated for the arrival of the train. The bus is cash only, 300 yen ($3). Everyone that got off the train got on the bus. It is 5km or so to the dinosaur museum, so I could walk it but it was too smokey.
The museum itself, has a lot of dinosaurs, and children with whooping cough.
I arrived at the museum, and instead of going in, immediately climbed up onto the roof. It is your standard masculine set of 2 giant balls.
The staff were aggressively helpful, trying to make me get a guided tour device, forcing me to take a map I would not look at even once, and when I tried to not go down the escalator to the start of the preferred route, I thought they may actually sound an alarm. Anyway, here is part of the main dinosaur hall. It is very large but does not photograph well.
More dinosaurs.
And more.
And even more. The website says you need to pre book a ticket and time and all sorts of other nonsense, I think this is a legacy of when they first grand reopened during covid, now you can just buy a ticket and go in, as long as it is not the 2nd or 4th wednesday of the month.
OK, enough with the dinosaur main hall.
Here is the escalator I initially tried to not go down which caused a full on panic.
There is a restaurant, and huge gift shop of course. The restaurant meals are dinosaur themed, dinosaur shaped chips with curry sauce, that sort of thing.
I climbed up as high as I could and had this view to myself.
The scariest dinosaur of all!
OMG! They killed and stuffed Moo Deng.
The grounds outside the museum are also nice, but oh so smokey.
Shall I walk back? I pondered for a while but decided not to.
Here is Katsuyama station and the dinosaur bus. Do you think the station is named after the ubiquitous pork schnitzel?
I had 20 minutes until the single carriage train arrived to take me back to Fukui, so here is a smokey shot up into the bigger mountains, apparently this is where SkiJAM! is, whatever that is. There were buses taking people there, but I am very sure there is no snow.
I was glad it was not a hiking day, I might have suffocated. So now I have achieved dinosaurusness, prefecturally.