Written by Florian & Thimo
New day new blog post. Today we got to visit the Tokugawa art museum where a lot of the Tokugawa’s family art is being exhibited. The Tokugawa shogunate are considered the millitary leaders to have finally unified Japan and marked the end of the sengoku jidai (time of warring states). Interestingly enough a lot of the art present was from China as that was considered to be a symbol of wealth to fill all the rooms except for the inside rooms with Chinese reliquaries. These were all from the Yuan-Ming dynasties and all very beatifull. All of the old family blades and armour were present too which was very impressive especially the records kept on them about who inherited what. The most impressive display they had was the tale of Genji an old legend not too dissimiliar to the British Canterberry tales in importance. Unfortunately the real legsnd is too fragile to be displayed but still impressive none the less.
In the afternoon a trip to another museum was planned. This time it was the Toyota museum for industry and technology.
It consisted of two main parts: the first was the history of cotton production, which included actual machinery that operated with the assistance of the staff while they explained the workings during the operation.
The second part was about the automobile industry, which began with a part of history about how cars were build and eventually led to a massive factory with enormous machines that could be operated by the visitor with the press of a button, which was really impressive to see.
Unfortunately, we only had 1,5 hours to walk through the museum before it closed, so we were not able to visit other parts of the museum, like the sort of arcade (sad us).
On the way back, we grabbed some diner and freshened up at the hotel, because it was time for karaoke! For 2 hours there was a big room filled with the 32 of us, combined with unlimited drinks, which is of course a very dangerous combination.
The poor waitress couldn’t keep up with our orders, but luckily that did not influence the mood as we sang “uit volle borst” until we finished the evening with “piano man”.
Most of the group went to a bar afterwards and some went back to the hotel to sleep, because tomorrow is a day off, so check in again to read what everyone did!