Saturday, August 16, 2008

Tokyo 08 - Tokyo National Museum

We reached Tokyo National Museum at 940AM, got into the long queue and waited for 20min before finally getting admitted into the museum. Some special exhibits actually took place on that very day. Majority of the people are locals (Japanese), so it was quite a pleasant surprise to learn that the local support for art & heritage is this huge (see 1st picture below).

There are few halls that made up Tokyo National museum. This is the Heiseikan hall (not related to Heisinki, the capital of Finland), which normally houses the special exhibits (No photo taking of the special pieces too).


Connected to the Heiseikan hall through a resting area is the Honkan hall.


Resting area.. Zzzz


View from the front door of Honkan hall.


Honkan (Japanese gallery) hall houses mostly Japanese ancient artifacts.
And Ive some of the following to share ...

Very ancient metal shoe!


Titled "Japanese Woman".


Buddha.


Tachi sword!


Clayman.

Claymans..


Ancient coins.


Japanese working on handy crafts.



Next, we headed to the Toyokan hall (Asian gallery), the hall that houses artifacts from the rest of Asia. And we have the following ...


Titled "Head of lion" from Kushan dynasty, Pakistan.


"Stone Statues of Heracles (also known as Hercules)" from Parthian period, Iraq.


"Glazed Tiles" during the Iron age from Iran.



Merely visiting 3 of the halls already took us 2 hours, and we were actually rushing through the pieces. There are more than 3 halls (check http://www.tnm.go.jp/en/guide/map/index.html) but we needed to check out from our hotel soon, so we ended up missing half of the experience. So i'd recommend allocating close to a whole day for visiting Tokyo National Museum.

On the way back, we went pass National Museum of Western Art and I took a shot of "The Gates of hell".


Next stop, Singapore, back to home/work/reality.
It was quite an eventful trip, from visiting canyons, man-made marvel, cabaret in Nevada to fish markets, shrine, maid-cafe in Tokyo.
And this is where i'd end my Japan trip show and tell.

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