Absolutely Nothing!

And why am I muttering about war? We visited two very interesting museums today – the Osaka Museum of Human Rights, and the Osaka International Peace Memorial Museum.

Both dealt harshly with man’s inhumanity to man – and both reminded us that we really need to be a little more open in our attitudes towards folks that are different from us..

To get to the Osaka Museum of Human Rights was not an easy task, and the museum itself actually tried hard to make it a challenge to find! This is not a museum for folks who do museums for the highlights. Honestly – we don’t think there were any real highlights here. Human Rights is a tough topic – and not one it’s easy to make light hearted. And they didn’t even try. It’s a serious museum on a very serious subject.

Lack of highlights aside, often a museum is more about what you put into it than what the designers put into it – and such was the case with this one. Once we found the entrance (thank goodness for the Japanese habit of trying to direct visitors.- even if they aren’t asking for directions), we were charged admittance and then instead of an English Audio Guide, they gave us a printed plastic notebook with photographs of different sections of the museum along with English text.

I figured that the audio guide system was broken – I didn’t realize how lucky we were to get the printed guide until we saw two other English language visitors trying to navigate the museum with the audio guides. Our printed guide was much much much more informative.

Also highly informative were the movies – offered with English subtitles if you pressed exactly the right sequence of buttons. We discovered these the hard way – pressing random buttons until we figured out how to get it working.

A museum on Human Rights is unlikely to be uplifting – and so we were not amazed to discover that the topics covered include Mercury Poisonings in Japan, the Japan treatment of Koreans living in Japan, and the Japanese treatment of two of their main indigenous tribes. Not very good sums it up.

Which is pretty interesting since Canadians have been beating up their government about our treatment of the First Nations – at least we now know that we aren’t the first – or probably the last – country to try to get rid of folks that just don’t seem to live the way we think they should.

Other topics covered included Gay Rights, the rights of Disabled Citizens, and the rights of Women. Human Rights is a broad topic, and the museum designers did their level best to hit a lot of different aspects of it.

We can’t recommend this museum to anyone else – I know the Intrepid Traveler and I are more willing than most to put effort into figuring out what the museum designers were trying to accomplish, but we did find this museum very interesting.

The 2nd museum of the day – the ‘Osaka International Peace Memorial Museum’ is very new, very well done – and frankly – very oddly named. It traces the history of Japan, Osaka, and the rest of the world from 1890 to just after WWII ended (say 1948 or so). The first two sections painstakingly attempted to give an historical overview of what Japan was doing during the period leading up to WWII. And the quick answer was trying to conquer as much of Asia as they could. These are the days of the Sino-Japanese war, the invasion of Korea by the Japanese, and the occupation of much of China. Give that – it’s interesting that from the Western point of view – we were ignoring Japan.

Instead we were focusing on what was happening in Germany, Britian and France – with some concern about what Russia was doing. It really wasn’t until Pearl Harbour – which most Americans felt was an uncalled for invasion of US territory that the ‘problem’ of Japan became apparent.

From the Museum’s view point, the events leading up to the American’s bombing of mainland Japan were covered quickly – with most of the museum focusing on what was happening in Osaka particularly, and Japan in general during the bombing.

The two most dramatic sections were devoted to a family home being prepared for a bombing raid, and a simulated bombing raid! This section was noisy, exciting, dramatic, eye-catching – and ultimately horrifying. And it was complete with an under ground home-made bomb shelter that featured bombing alert alarms ringing, fire raging around the shelter, and folks screaming. Not very light hearted.

Pictures of sections of Osaka before and after the fire bombing were displayed as well.

And then there were Pictures of the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan to complete the journey thru time.

War – What is it Good For – Absolutely nothing.

An interesting way to end our visit to Osaka. After we left the museum, we had to walk in a park – just to get our heads back out of the negative think of the day

Back at our castle we have new guests – lovely young ladies from Calgary. Thank goodness we were able to spend a pleasant evening chatting – then head off to bed. Tomorrow we must move on to Nara.

We are hoping for wonderful things in Nara – Osaka has definitely exceeded expectations. Despite the negative aspects of the two hard hitting museums today, we must admit to absolutely loving several of the museums we visited. The Osaka Museum of History was excellent, the Osaka Castle is not to be missed, the Osaka Museum of housing was great, and we had a lovely time at the Aquarium – that’s another must see. And we really enjoyed our stay with Ken & Mark. It was very pleasant, despite being unable to do more than microwave and toast..

Quick update for those who might be wondering – we are still on our budget – running under $25 a day per person for travel, museums and food. And yes – that includes wine.. (or Saki – this being Japan and all). We’ve managed this by becoming very very good at shopping the grocery stores and convenience stores for food for lunch and dinner. We’ve scored Sushi at 200 Yen off, bread on discount because it’s the end of the day (after 4:00 PM apparently), and done some very yummy tasting. I’ve also tasted some things that honestly – I don’t know what they were, I don’t care to know what they were, and I’d be happy if I never tasted them again!

But Bottom line – there’s lots to see and do in Osaka – we would recommend including it on your next trip to Japan. Great Museums, really nifty neighbourhoods to walk around, including one where houses are a door plus about a foot on each side wide. That’s it – but they are long, at least as far as we could see on the inside. I’m guessing these are housing that were put up quickly after the war, and have survived because they are inexpensive for a single person to occupy. And there are some very classy neighbourhoods as well – so something for everyone.

Signing off on a more upbeat note than we started this blog report – The Soup Lady and the Intrepid Traveler