That’s what the Toba Seafolk Museum is called here in Japan. While there are some signs in english on occasion, if you ask anybody for directions or about the museum, it really helps to say it in Japanese: Umi no Hakubutsukan (oo-mee-noh-ha-coo-boo-tsoo-kahn).

After a really long first day in Japan, which included visiting Woody Joe in Shizuoka and then getting a good look at the Hacchoro in the port of Yaizu, I was a bit burned out and decided to just relax in my room in the morning. The museum opens at 9:00am, but I didn’t get there until a little before noon.

First, a note about using Google Maps, which I used heavily during trip planning. If you look on the web about the museum, it would appear that the museum is open daily except for a small handful of holidays. Well, Google Maps, has a neat feature where you click on a public place like the museum, and it will tell you how popular the place is over the hours of the day. This would help you figure out when to avoid crowds. Well, I had a last minute freak-out before I left home when Google indicated that the museum was closed on Tuesdays, the main day I was to be in Toba.

So, I made contingency plans, and when I arrived at Toba, I asked about the issue at the hotel, but they said it was open. Could the hotel owner not know the museum is closed on Tuesdays? Seems unlikely. And, in fact, the museum is open on Tuesdays. Google lied, so just beware of that online feature.

Getting to the museum from town is very easy. There is a great local bus system here that you want to use called the Kamome Bus (kah-mow-may). The bus center is attached to the Toba JR station. Just be aware it’s on the ocean side of the tracks. The bus to Umi no Hakubutsukan is the No. 4 bus and it picks up at station number 2. The person at the ticket window can indicate which door the bus arrives at.

The round-trip is 500¥, but you don’t have to pay until you arrive at the museum. As you enter the bus, grab the little return ticket that’s sticking out of the machine just inside the bus door. You’ll give this to the driver when you exit the bus on your return to the bus center.

At the Museum

I read something that indicated it was a 10 minute walk from the museum bus stop to the museum itself. Another lie. The bus stops directly in front of the museum entrance. Just be sure to push one of the stop request buttons when you get close so the bus driver knows to stop there. Maybe he’d stop anyway, but why chance it?

Admission to the museum is 800¥ for adults and 400¥ for children under 17. If you want a refreshment, there is a little café right across from the museum entrance. It appears to be staffed by the museum people, so you may have to let them know at the front desk that you want to sit in the café. If it’s a hot day, you might take a respite from the heat as the café is air conditioned. Note that the rest of the museum is not, with the exception of movie viewing theater, where you can watch some film about Ama, the female divers of Japan.

Museum entrance and main building.

If I had more time, I would have take more time to learn about the Ama, as there is a great deal of information about them at the museum. There is also “Pearl Island” in Toba, where I believe you can learn more about the Ama.

As it was, I spent about 3 hours looking at boats, fishing history, models of boats, the history of Toba, boats, and more boats. I did my best to learn and collect as much information as I could. I ended up burning up one camera battery, filling up my iPhone (doesn’t take much), and collecting more than 500 photos throughout the day. Of course, some were just countryside photos, a few selfies, and views of the bus, etc. But, for the most part, they were boat pictures.

Inside the boat repository building.

I will have to admit that the value of most of the photos may be somewhat less than might be expected. There are so many boats in the repository that you can’t even get close to most of them. Also, the lighting is so bad that it’s hard to get good shots. Some are blurry and when I used the flash, it over exposed some of the pics.

Not a lot of room to get close to the boats.

One subject that was really hard to shoot because it was in a dark corner, in the shadow of a bigger boat, was a small score for me. The boat is a nori gathering boat called a Bekabune, and I happen to be currently modeling one of these. So, this was a particularly nice find.

Bekabune, once used on Tokyo Bay for harvesting seaweed.

Besides the full-sized boats, there’s a nice assortment of models in the main building. Again, there was a problem with lighting. But some in a glass case were well lit. Others that were not well lit suffered further by being in a glass case, where glare was a bigger issue.

Amazingly, some models were not in a case, and one European style galleon model made me nervous because I was carrying a backpack, and if I was careless, I could have easily stepped back or turned around and broken some of the rigging. The Japanese visitors must be amazingly careful around this stuff!

One of the things I found the most interesting were the dioramas showing how fishing was carried out. One was a full-sized boat suspended above the floor, with fishermen wearing what is most easily described as grass skirts, pole fishing over the side. It looked very dynamic, and I think it must have been a very accurate image, as there was a video playing in one part of the museum below the boat where a the bow of a modern day fishing boat was lined with fishermen with long poles just hauling up fish after fish. One fisherman pulls up a big fish and flings the line overhead and behind him with a big catch. He then throws the line back in and it looks like within seconds he’s caught another. So, the boat display seems authentic.

But, the big score for me, turned out to be the museum store. I found a whole section on Japanese boats, most of which were from the currently closed Maritime Science Museum in Tokyo. It took me a while to decide what to get, but I ended up buying about 6000¥ on books. Sadly, there were many others I wanted to get too, as they are really hard to order and have shipped to the U.S. But, I figure I’ll have an opportunity to find the same books when I’m in Tokyo or in the Ogi Folk Museum on Sado Island in a few days.

Well, after about 3 hours, I was pretty well spent given the 80 degree weather and 87% humidity. I cooled off in the café while waiting for the bus. I almost decided to just hang out there around the museum and in the café until closing time, 5:00pm. But, at the last minute, I figured I’d better head back and get to work writing.

Hot, tired, wet, stuffed brain, but satisfied.

Tomorrow, I could go back to the museum in the morning for a bit, but I don’t think I’d get that much more out of it if I did. At least not so soon after, and without specific goals in mind. So, I’ll be leaving for Ise-shi station tomorrow. Not sure if I will stop at Ise now or not. It’s a beautiful place, but, I have been there before, and there’s so much to see everywhere that it might be better to get settled in Tokyo, where I’ll be staying the next two nights.

Sometime in the future, when I have more time to sort through things I’ll start posting more of the photos from the Toba Seafolk Museum. Ω