Junk or Treasure? The Ever-Rising Retro Assortment At This Outside Museum In Tokyo

An exhibition of things collected by a person over time as a interest, together with some very distinctive and uncommon objects, is displayed outdoors for all to see 24 hours a day with the one safety measure being some CCTV cameras. Solely in Japan I assume!

This place is a treasure trove of all types of retro machines, automobiles, merchandise, enamel indicators and statues belonging to at least one particular person. Masae Kato has turned a moderately bland and nondescript nook of northern Tokyo into one thing of an attraction by displaying their assortment for all to see.

As I used to be compiling a current publish about a chaotic wanting out of doors museum simply outdoors of Tokyo, I realised that there was the same form of place a lot nearer to house. For the final 18 months I’ve been protecting tabs on this free out of doors retro museum which is only a ten minute experience from the Tokyo Fox World Operations Centre.

The mega-sized Don Quixote North Ikebukuro low cost retailer on Kawagoe-dori Road is positioned on one nook of a busy junction in Toshima Ward, and over the highway in Itabashi Ward is that this retro museum which appears to get increasingly outlandish as I go by it every week. It’s proper subsequent to Fushimi Inari Daimyojin Shrine which I first got here throughout on the innaugural Foxed within the Head Inari shrines of Tokyo biking sequence from 5 years in the past.

The show is persistently altering and presumably not as a result of stuff is being stolen! The latest addition is a really rusty previous automobile that’s over 100 years previous, and the one considered one of its sort in Japan. Such a major historic exhibit is of course positioned subsequent to a statue of Doraemon!

 

The centrepiece of the show is a golden seated bronze statue providing good well being and  fortune in addition to safety in opposition to visitors security amongst different issues.

 

I didn’t actually take a detailed have a look at all of the notes caught on the again of the statue however I assume they’re prayers and needs of some sort.

A number of the treasures are unbelievably previous making it appear all of the extra unbelievable that these things is offered so freely. A tanuki (racoon canine) statue on show on the entrance is from the 1850s!

Retro automobiles take up a good quantity of the house and reveals embrace a bicycle sidecar from 1940 and a racing kart from 1984.

    

An abacus known as soroban (counting tray) is one thing like an old style calculator I assume. Regardless of having seen options on it on Japanese TV a few instances over time I nonetheless don’t actually have a lot of an concept about the way it all works. Possibly time to study on this web site!

There are some fascinating struggle items together with a nineteenth century cannon of the British Japanese Fleet from the Anglo-Satsuma Struggle of August 1863.

 

In the event you’re questioning, all (some?) of the objects are on the market. There’s no pricing in fact however only a small signal saying to name the proprietor Kato and make a suggestion! I haven’t made the decision  but!!

 

It must be famous that this isn’t the primary time this place has appeared on Tokyo Fox because it was briefly featured in my annual ‘Christmas in Tokyo 2024‘ publish however the focus then was simply the festive-related options of the exhibit.

The place is lit up at evening making it extra notiecable for the heavy stream of drivers passing by alongside Kawagoe-kaido Road or Route 8.

At nighttime I even bought to see somebody putting in the aforementioned previous automotive and utilizing all method of instruments to assemble the picket shelter wherein it’s housed.

 

This pretty uninteresting a part of northern Tokyo is never ever visited by vacationers (each worldwide and Japanese) so virtually everybody seen is an area resident or simply passing by the neighbourhood on their solution to or from Saitama. It’s not straightforward to cease your automobile alongside this busy intersection however for those who’re ever close to Ikebukuro this quirky place is price making an allowance for as a facet quest journey.

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