Time Travel in Japan

It is one thing to travel and visit places. It can be interesting to see how things used to be but this is usually in a almost sterile environment of a enclosed museum.

The ultimate would be to travel back in time to really appreciate the differences.

Every time I visit Japan I like to time travel for an afternoon. I have been here so many times I feel I could get a job here( especially if I spoke Japanese).

The Edo Tokyo Open Air Museum ( http://tatemonoen.jp/ ) rescues buildings. Without this museum this magnificent representations from a past era would be land fill.

During the massive development after 1945 expansion became the norm. Any building in the way would be demolished. This park collects otherwise doomed buildings and re-builds them to their former glory.

There are 1000 year old farmhouses which keep a fire burning ( the smoke limits the pests in the straw thatched roof), traders shops and their living quarters to bath houses. Many Japanese view the bath house and remember a time not very long ago where this was the norm.

A few of the buildings retain shrapnel damage from bombing in the World War II.

I liked the uniqueness of each shop. If you were a liquor shop that is pretty much all you sold, if pens and paper were your game then you didn't have shelves of potato chips. The tea sellers sold tea, nothing else. I have nothing against Lawson and 7/11 but, even as a boy in England, I remember you bought bread from one store then onto the next for some meat.
The reaction of most people on entering the old bath house was to smile. Obviously it held happy memories for most people.

When I began to look closer there still exists a few of the old shops. A few tea stores, but the over riding image of suburban Japan is the modern convenience store. I wonder if in 100 years time kids will walk around a park wondering who was Lawson and why did they sell so much stuff.

Are there any similar parks in Japan? I would love to see their version of real life historical buildings.