I found tiny old glass bottles in a showcase when I visited the Palace Factory in Imabari. There was an explanation plate on the showcase, and it said that this private museum was founded by Dr. Taichi Shouji. It is located in a residential area of Nakano, Tokyo. My wife and I visited there in the winter of 2009.
I made a reservation phone call to him and we got off at Shimoigusa Station on a Saturday afternoon. It took ten minutes on foot to the museum, but there were no signboards. It was very hard to get there without a smartphone. As feared, we got lost because I didn’t have a smartphone at that time. Anyway, we finally arrived there.
The master of the museum welcomed us warmly at the door of his house of collections. We paid the entrance fee, three hundred yen per person, and went into the wooden room made of old railroad ties. There were so many old glass bottles crammed all over the room. He told us that all of these bottles were hand-made products, and that he got these classic empty bottles from garbage dumps. The treasures were originally buried in old garbage sites and he dug them out himself. His digging was so shady that he sometimes got questioned by the authorities. But he never stopped digging because he loves old-style bottles. You can find various colors, sizes, and figures of bottles in a well-organized display.
After appreciating the beautiful bottles, he invited us to the upstairs of the museum where his private working space was. It turned out that he was a professor of English literature and an amateur folk song musician! He talked with us and performed his original songs on his guitar. It took almost three hours to the end of his private concert, and we really enjoyed it. I hope you can enjoy this museum with the professor’s explanations in English.
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