Visiting a Folk Museum in Japan

Remember that nice old lady who I bumped into at the library, and who took me out for the best cup of coffee ever? Well, amazing person that she is, she came and picked me up in her car and took me to a local art exhibit. It turns out her husband is an avid artist and sculptor so they have a lot of interest in this type of thing. The little figurines were so adorable! Their expressions, their clothes, their body postures…all the little details made them so much fun to look at.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

After that, she took me to a folk museum that was displaying all sorts of household goods that were in common use during the early to mid-1900’s. So, this means that she would have been using a lot of these things as a child and young adult. I love this sort of museum because it gives you some insight into what everyday life might have looked like back then. Looking at the treasures and fineries of the aristocracy is of course fascinating, but getting some small glimpse of the life of the average person is somehow so meaningful to me.

A lot of these items look quite different from what was using during the same era in the West. Can you tell what everything is? Some are easier to guess than others!

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Advertisement

26 thoughts on “Visiting a Folk Museum in Japan

    1. Definitely! I have visited Japan many times before, but I’d never stayed as long as this. It’s so interesting to see so many different layers of Japanese culture emerge when you actually experience daily life firsthand!

  1. Looks like you made a cool friend 🙂 I’d love to go to these museums one day! Oh and the sculptures look super adorable, such awesome characters! 😀

    1. Ooo what sort of pot is that? I Googled it, but I couldn’t find it. Are you referring to the very last picture? It’s called a kamado, which is an old wood fired cooking stove, and the photo above that is a meal set!

      1. Haha oh I see! I know exactly what you’re referring to now. Interestingly, I didn’t see any of those. But, that big dark jug at the very back of the top photo is for rice wine, which is pretty neat hehe.

    1. Thank you! I totally agree. I meet so many cute people like this when in Japan haha. I feel like a lot of people in Japan are genuinely eager to show you their own culture, and to learn about your culture. At home in Vancouver we’re so used to everyone coming from somewhere else, so I find that people aren’t as curious or enthusiastic about cultural exchanges. It’s been a neat experience in Japan for sure!

      1. That’s a good point. Because we’re from places that are already multicultural, we are somewhat surrounded by small snippets of other cultures whereas in Japan, their culture is relatively unchanged. Plus they are super nice people who not only want to learn but also love to teach people too 😀

      2. Absolutely. That’s one of the things that’s so fascinating for me when in Japan. Coming from a young, mosaic place like Canada, and going to a country with such strong tradition, culture and history…I feel like it adds a real depth to life that I’ve been missing out on!

    1. You got it right!! It’s a little manual washing machine. I don’t think I would’ve been able to figure that one out, seeing it for the first time. I can understand how you would also think concrete mixer haha! XD

  2. I plan to reblog your post in my blog https://hellocreativestimes.com. Since you have enabled reblogging on your post, I am assuming that you are allowing others to reblog this post. However, if you have any objection to reblogging your post, please let us know as soon as possible. Thank you.
    🙂

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s