While in Tokyo, Rachel and I visited the Tokyo-Edo Architectural Museum in Musashi Koganei area. This museum consisted of old historical buildings that had been taken from their original foundation and rebuilt. So a lot of the materials in these houses are the original thing - some being really old.
This house belonged to a very wealthy family, who dealt in politics. (Can't remember who exactly.) But the house was beautiful with lots of glass windows - something very expensive at the time. The place was huge!
The museum included a beautiful Shinto shrine. I love these kinds of buildings.
Some of our favorite houses were the old Farmhouses. They had interesting roofs, and there were a lot of the volunteers who would hang out in these buildings. We enjoyed talking with the volunteers. Some could actually speak English, but most were just Japanese speaking. But despite that, we still had good conversation, and both Rachel and I were both pleasantly surprised at how good our Japanese was.
Inside these farmhouses were lots of interesting old trinkets such as pots, pans, woven baskets, and most houses included both a small Shinto and Buddhist shrine. We went on Tuesday, which the volunteers stoke the fires in the hearth in order to smoke out the house. The roofs of these old farmhouses were sticks packed together, so in order to keep bugs and small animals from living in it, they periodically build smokey fires in order to kill anything living in the roofs.
We also got to see an old bathhouse. It had lots of beautiful murals. It was split in half, one side was for the women, one side for the men.
We had a great time! Our trip was both entertaining as well as informative. (When we went to the LDS Temple later that day, we smelt like campfire smoke. I guess there was nothing we could do about that!) For anyone visiting the Tokyo area and interested in historical Japan, I would definitely suggest visiting this museum!
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