The Shitamachi Museum is next to Ueno Park in Tokyo. Shitamachi refers to the southern part of the city (“shitamachi” literally means “lower town”) where the common people (artisans and businessmen) lived during the Edo period.

While I was walking through the museum, which recreated homes from the Edo period, an old lady was walking in front of me with some relatives. As she walked on the wooden planks outside the “houses”, she said “natsukashiii!”, meaning, kind of, “wow, I remember this…” That was the coolest part of visiting the museum. I remember reading that not long ago, the sidewalks were covered with wood but I can't remember why. It might have been to protect against mud when it rained.

The Musuem also had posters and old toys, which are what I took the most pictures of. This poster is an ad for a bombing drill during World War Two. It says "Drill!" And then the dates, one for military maneuvers and one in case of a bombing. At the bottom, it says "Water! Mask! Switch!" I don't know what the "switch" is about.

The funny thing about this poster is that it took me a while to figure out that I didn't reverse it by accident in photoshop even though the script is backwards -- because the kanji aren't backwards. Rather, it's written right to left! Japanese was traditionally writtern right to left and apparently didn't change to the modern left-to-right until recently.

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