Can't promise this one to be quite as interesting as the others, but I shall try. As I was walking through Asukayama park earlier I came across two museums, I'd heard a little about both but didn't realise they were both in Asukayama (although since one is called the Asukayama Museum, I maybe should've took the hint).
So there was the Asukayama Museum and the Paper museum. Yes, the paper museum - something about the old Oji paper mill. Swiftly ignoring said paper museum, I decided to have a look around the other one. After milling around the reception looking at some really cool postcards and books, I finally bought my ticket and asked if it was ok to take photos - I didnt understand her reply very well (damn asking questions in japanese, you arent going to understand the answer! fool!) but it seemed to be "yes, if you write your name here and wear this arm band". I'm not sure what the band said but I'm hoping it said something like "foreign press - photo taking allowed".
I wasn't disappointed, the museum was quite interesting - this may have been due to the lack of English in there. Museums are always better when you're just there to look at pretty pictures and exhibitions rather than having to read through a load of text to understand anything.
Luckily, I'd arrived just in time for a historical theatre piece which was basically mechanical mannequinns telling the story of something or another with a video. Despite understanding none of it, I really enjoyed it; the trees changed due to the seasons, I understood words here and there, there was a woman with a tail... wait, what? A tail? I didn't quite get that bit but due to some history Oji seems to have with foxes, I assumed that the fluffy tail emerging from her kimono was showing her to be some kind of fox god... maybe? Either way, it was a good watch, and a video came on after which, although really fun to see, didn't seem to be very informative so much as showing that, in the cherry blossom season, people got ridiculously drunk in historical japan under cherry blossom trees. Not much has changed then... hopefully.
But yeah, despite understanding nothing, it was really cool to see the kanji for Oji in really old historical documents (with pictures, Im not a psycho reading through long texts in a language I don't understand just to find two letters) and being able to see some of the history this area has.
And history it has, it seems. From all of the pictures Oji seems to go back quite far, which is cool, especially since Japanese history is the coolest thing since sliced bread.
This piece of art really took my attention. It was a photo of a really long scroll (lifesize, it went quite far down the wall) and is an artwork map of the area, and this little bit (you cant see due to terrible quality, for some reason the camera didn't like this picture) is Oji. Changed a bit, like.
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