Stacey's Bodacious Japan Trip: Niigata trip Day 2: Museum, Shrine, Ocean, Aquarium!

Sunday morning, we were once again up bright and early for our second day of adventure. I actually wanted to make it to our destinations today, so I insisted on driving instead of trying to wrestle with the public transportation system. As a result, we made it to all our intended destinations and then some!

First we headed out to the Northern Culture Museum just outside Niigata City. It was really beautiful house. The original owners were very wealthy landowners, and amongst the biggest landowners in Japan. After WWII a lot of their land was lost to others, and they decided to make their big house and surrounding land a museum.

There were two big buildings, one was the actual house, and one has been made into a display area for artifacts.

This was an old beehive that was found on the property, but everyone thought it was too beautiful to be destroyed, so they put it in the museum.

These are some old boats that were used to transport rice and hay down the river (as you can see in this old photograph.)

Some old ledgers and workroom cabinets and drawers.

There was also a farm house with a lot of old farm equipment.

There was also a building for storing farming machinery and a smaller house behind it. There was also this nice lotus pond which had apparently been grown from a seed that was found in some archaeological site about 60 years ago. The seed was believed to be many hundreds of years old. So they tried planting it and it did germinate and became the beautiful lotus pond that is present today. Pretty neat, I thought.

After the museum, there was a little local festival taking place just outside the museum gates. The locals were excited that there were Westerners in their little food-festival and a lot of them gave us free samples. I think they just wanted us to experience their food and culture. It was very nice of them, and I did end up purchasing some foods to eat later. In addition to food there was a little display of an old-timey frame that was used to dry out rice after the harvest,

After that, we drove into Niigata City to Minato Inari Jinja, a Shinto shrine.

This shrine is unique because its Lion statues are the only ones in Japan that rotate on their bases. In ancient Niigata City, the local fishermen’s wives would come to the shrine, rotate the lions to face the ocean, and pray for bad weather so that their husbands would have to stay home with them. The lion statues that are on the pedestals today are fairly new, and the old ones are in cages on display next to the main shrine.

There were a lot of old statues on the side of the building that were not on display anymore. It was crazy to think just how old these stone statues were to have so much erosion visible.

After that, we were headed to the Marinepia Nihonkai Aquarium in Niigata City, but on the way there I saw a beach and had to stop. IT was really rainy and windy, so the sea was kinda scary, but that didn’t stop me from walking out onto the dock and taking some film of the amazing waves. Within ten minutes the waves were getting bigger and bigger and we decided to head to the museum.

Once we got to the aquarium, we took our sweet time admiring all the diverse ocean-life that was on display. There were also a few birds and mammals at the aquarium, not strictly fish. There were penguins and North American beavers, otters, seals and sea lions. I think the jellyfish and koi fish
were my favorite though.