The Tokyo Traveler

Each year on the second Monday of October, the Japanese celebrate Health & Sports day, Taiiku no hi in Japanese, with a national holiday.  Established in 1966, this holiday celebrates the anniversary of the 1964 Tokyo Olympic opening ceremony and encourages residents to enjoy sports and cultivate a healthy mind and body.
Schools and communities sponsor local sports days to celebrate Taiiku no hi and to  encourage children to live an active lifestyle while having some fun with their friends and classmates.
The benefits of a healthy mind and body are not limited to children or one day of the year.  …read more

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Mitsuo Aida (1924-1991) was a traditional Japanese brush-and-ink calligrapher and poet who became well know for the simple and insightful way that he wrote about the challenges, pitfalls and joys that are part of daily life.   His artful presentation of his writings utilizing the calligraphy skills that he learned as a young man are on display to great effect at the Mitsuo Aida Museum in Tokyo.
The museum bills itself and “A place to spend two hours of your life” and encompasses five exhibition rooms, a store and a relaxation or meditative space where you are free to pause and …read more

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The Tokyo Metropolitan Photography Museum specializes in still and moving images and is the first of its kind in Japan with a focus on collecting, displaying and restoring images of cultural importance to Japan and around the word.  The main gallery is used to exhibit works from the museum’s own collection as well as an array of works collected from around the world and Japan, while a secondary space is used to present independently organized and traveling exhibitions from different Japanese and international museums.
The museum also houses an Images and Technology Gallery which displays works that utilize computer graphics and …read more

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The Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is located in Tokyo Dome City and is a great place to visit for  baseball fans and historians alike.  The museum documents the history of the game in Japan from the late 1800’s, when Horace Wilson, an American Teacher at Ichiban Chugaku (now Tokyo University) first introduced baseball to his students, through to the present day.
Exhibits include over 100 artifacts from professional baseball in Japan that include a well designed locker room setting where you can get a close-up look at the uniforms for each of the twelve professional teams playing in …read more

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Are you fascinated with how people live? Do you want to get a better understanding of how the village of Edo started out and grew to become the sprawling, multi-faceted metropolis that is Tokyo today? Then you should visit the Fukugawa Edo Museum. The Fukagawa Edo Museum presents a fascinating reproduction of downtown Edo in the mid-19th century. The warehouses and stores have been painstakingly recreated along with a typical street of row houses where you can see the humble abode of a fisherman, a typical kitchen from the era and the living room that must have …read more

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You don’t need to go to Beijing to get in the Olympics spirit. Japan recently gave it’s athletes a royal send off to Beijing and the country is feverishly promoting its bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics to be held in Tokyo. The city hosted the Olympic Games in 1964 and is home to a museum dedicated to the history of sport in Japan. The Prince Chichibu Memorial Sports Museum, located in the National Stadium was one of the main venues of the 1964 Olympic Games and houses a large collection of Olympic memorabilia and displays that …read more

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Visitors to Tokyo tend to do a lot of walking while touring the city.  The routine goes something like this, walk to the nearest Tokyo Metro Station, navigate your way to your destination, possibly transiting one or more stations on foot in the process, walk to and around your desired destination and finally,when you have had your fill of the sights or your feet are just too tired to walk anymore, do it all again in reverse to get back to your accommodations.  Now that’s a lot of walking! It’s good for you and you see a lot more by …read more

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The origins of Yebisu Beer date back to 1887, when Nippon Beer Brewery started producing beer in the area then called Mita Village. The name “Yebisu” was adopted later and is a variation of the name of Ebisu, the surrounding town and the station closest to the Beer Museum. Nippon Breweries, Ltd. changed its name to Sapporo Breweries, Ltd. in 1964.
The Beer Museum Yebisu is dedicated to the history, science and culture of the beloved beverage and the century-old tradition of brewing beer. Beer making made its debut in Japan as early as 1876 when Seibei …read more

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Do you love money? At the Banknote and Postage Stamp Museum in Shinjuku you can see a lot of money, and it’s old money!
The National Printing Bureau was founded in 1871 as the Paper Money Office (Shiheishi) under the Ministry of Finance and they have engaged in the manufacture of banknotes and postage stamps since that time.  The Banknote and Postage Stamp Museum was created by the National Printing Bureau to preserve the history of the Japanese currency and offers exhibits of historical and current banknotes, postage stamps and securities along with the equipment and technologies utilized in making …read more

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Artists are often compared to one another and more often inspire and compete with one another to create great works.  Throughout the history of Japanese art, each generation of painters, Buddhist sculptors, potters and other artists studied the works of the masters, their contemporaries and their predecessors. The visual arts of each generation flourished and were enriched by rivalries between distinguished talents.  The unprecedented exhibit, “Dueling Geniuses -The Greatest Highlights of Japanese Artists”, focuses on 24 masters of Japanese art in 12 pairs, whose careers enlightened the history of Japanese art.
Comparing artworks by master artists reveals fascinating details of similarity …read more

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