Today was a rest day so I went to a museum.
The museum was enormous. It is an outdoor architectural museum in Inuyama which is a castle town north of Nagoya. I have been to Inuyama before and seen the monkey reseach facility / park and the original 'shoes off' castle. Today I went to what I consider to be an amusement park for the elderly.
Meiji-Mura is set on a lake, it took me 3 hours to walk one lap of the museum area, without really stopping anywhere for any length of time. There are close to a hundred historic buildings, I believe they have been 'moved' from their original location. This is a bit mind boggling. They were not originally here, and they have not been rebuilt from pictures or plans, instead brick by brick they have been moved here and rebuilt. Unless I am very much mistaken? The inside of most buildings is definitely very old and worn, and they have put some displays of phones in the telephone exchange, post boxes in the post office, that kind of thing, but the attraction is the buildings themselves. I will let the pics explain it.
Here is the station area at Inuyama. Bus stop to Meiji-Mura is on the right, well sign posted, they take IC card, this is the first stop, Meiji-Mura is the last and the bus comes about every 30 minutes. You cannot stuff up.
The bus was not even half full, but some of the old folks that got on seem to have covid or worse. Great.
The gate area where the bus stops was largely unimpressive. It is $25 to get in! A tough ask for me... but I knew that before coming. The uninspiring gate area had me questioning my wisdom.
OK, I guess this is a nice old building. The Mie prefecture office. Remember, they picked it up and moved it here!
A couple of old train carriages the emperor and empress once rode on. There is a steam train and old tram that go around the park, both were not running today, the signs explaining they were not running today had a level of permanence about them.
Next I went back to school. The desks are very narrow, modern students are too fat to fit.
The insides of most buildings were probably not worth going into, but at this stage I had no concept of how big this outdoor museum was.
I do not even know what this building was / is, tricky light for the photo.
A few old buildings in a street setup. The grounds are very nice to wander around too.
This is the old telephone exchange building. They had old phones and switchboards inside.
Here is the inside of a hospital building, with beds. You are not allowed to lay down on them. For $25 I think I should be allowed.
Genuinely old, and in some places I felt like I might fall through the floor.
Here is an old tram car. I am pretty sure this still runs around the park some of the time, but I did not see it going today.
The inside of the machinery shed has a bunch of huge old looms. If you want to see similar looms operating, go to the Toyota car museum, yes really, before cars they made looms.
The Uji-yamada Post Office. I just checked, Uji-yamada is about 150km away.
There are quite a few restaurants dotted around the park, but they all seem to only be serving the types of meals I would eat for dinner, too much for me for lunch.
This is an actual full size cathedral. It is massive.
Complete with all the ornateness on the inside.
Even the Knights Templar or whatever this is.
And so I thought the cathedral was at the edge of the park, and then I walked behind the cathedral and here is the view over the hill. A lot more to go.
Now I am inside the old jail. I believe Japanese jails still basically look like this. You can now get put in jail for texting while riding a bicycle.
Annoyingly, they have fallen for the keep the kids interested by putting up anime signage everywhere trend. This is the Imperial hotel.
And now an old library.
This is the former head office of the Kawasaki bank. Kawasaki is an outer suburb of Tokyo so I presume it used to be located there. There is an added on staircase to climb to the top, but frustratingly the best view is blocked by a filthy perspex window.
this is the best view I could get from the top of the old bank building.
Part of an old historic railway bridge, that now goes nowhere.
An old train and what is claimed to be the Japanese immigrants assembly hall, from Hilo in Hawaii.
Now we get into the Addams family / Munsters area of the park. This one has the USA flag. It used to be the Seattle evangelical Japanese church, and before that an ordinary house. Really. This has been moved here from Seattle. It looks suitably spooky.
The park is located around a large reservoir. In case you get sick of buildings you can go look at the lake.
And for my last pic, the scariest looking building of all. Complete with a crowing black crow on the top of the spire - 'The Kitasato Institute was founded as a research institute for infectious diseases by Dr. Shibasaburo Kitasato'. So yeah, that sounds like crazy stuff probably happened inside.
So in summary, probably worth $25.