Paper museum (at long last!)

For about two months I have been going on about going to the paper museum, which is relatively close to our flat and, I must admit, it let me down a little... The Paper museum is in Asukayama park, right next to the Kita City Asukayama museum. 

I'd read it had two floors, and right enough, it did! It had a couple of models of paper presses, some rather long explanations in Japanese (kanji, kanji), and less about Japanese paper than I expected. Something I found rather annoying is when you had the title in Japanese and in English, but the text was all in Japanese! Personally I'd rather not even have the title in English... We did notice as we were leaving that you could buy a guide in English for 200 yen. Rather expensive for a couple of sheets of paper, but anyway, surely it would be in the museum's benefit to point it out when tearing the ticket out of the Grutt pass book! 

Anyway, I found the second floor much more enjoyable, more interactive, and then the Japanese paper section - including how washi's made, paper dolls making paper (weird!), a really cool paper castle and paper clothes, and even a stuffed paper bear which looked like it was made from some shiny material!

More information on their webpage: http://www.papermuseum.jp/en/  

PS: You can sit on stools made of corrugated cardboard! And people (not kids; in fact, there were no kids to be seen) actually use them! I sat on them for about 5 minutes, but they kind of felt like they were going to give way, which surprisingly they did not.

Kita City Asukayama Museum

One of the museums featured in Grutt pass is the Kita City Asukayama Museum, in Asukayama Park (next to Ooji station). You can't miss the park - it's just a lot of green foliage stretching up the way. Some time back we went to Ooji Shrine, which we got to from the other side of the road, and wondered how on earth you got to that park... answer is, you have to take the overhead crossing from the other side of the station.

The museum is not very big at all. Before entering the main exhibit where we had to pull out our Grutt pass for free entry, we stopped at the special exhibit which is on until October 11th. This exhibit was really small, just one room - maybe 20 items at the most on 'Japanese crafts' ... like Mexican flower vases (?). But really worth it - even if it's just for the flying tanukis! There was also a video on how different items were made - vases, dolls, and so on. I must go back some other time and watch the rest of it, 'cause it looked really interesting. And hey - it's free!

The main exhibit was probably pretty normal, but not bad. And have I mentioned small? I quite enjoyed it, it covered the history of Kita, including a bit of everything, and featuring a boat, a skelleton, shells, a reconstruction of a house, and some pretty nice images, amongst other things. The good thing is, there was an audioguide available with readings in English (though some recordings were only in Japanese, humpf!).

Grutt pass

Today we finally got our act together and got a Grutt pass!

For those of you who haven't heard, Grutt pass (gurutto pasu, in Japanese) is a booklet with tickets and discount vouchers for loads and loads of museums, galleries, even zoos or aquariums...

I believe in past years it was for fewer attractions, but with the current Grutt pass you can access 70 venues... Just buy the booklet for 2,000 yen (for an adult ticket) at the ticket counter of any of the establishments which accept the Grutt pass, and hand it over when buying your ticket so they can tear the coupon in question out. In some cases (like in Ueno zoo) you can get in free; in others (like today's visit, the National Museum) you get a discount. Also, in the National Museum you can get two discount tickets - one for the permanent exhibition and one for the special exhibit. When you access the first museum, you have to have the expiry date stamped on the front of the booklet. Grutt pass is valid for 2 months. I would say it's almost impossible to visit 70 places in 60 days, but I figure if you visit 4 or 5 museums -depending on the price- you've probably got your money's worth.

The pass is not advertised as much as it probably would be in other countries, but it really is good value for money (and that's probably the reason why). We asked for it at the National Museum, but there wasn't even a sign... just some brochures hidden behind the desk! ;)

Check out some more information here http://www.museum.or.jp/grutto/english.html

Colourful nails ^^

One of the things I always thought I really had to do when I came to Japan was get some nice nails... that was until I found out how much they cost!

I believe there are machines for having nail designs stamped on your nail somewhere... have not come across them yet (or haven't noticed them), although I feel quite uneasy about sticking my fingers in a machine....

Lucky enough there are plenty of mags all over the place where I can just sit and drool over the amount of cute (and tacky) designs there are... one day, when I'm rich... sigh...