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KURASHIKI |
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At first sight, KURASHIKI , 26km west of Okayama, looks like just
another bland identikit Japanese town with a recreation of Copenhagen's
Tivoli Park tacked onto one side. But ten minutes' walk south of the
station, the modern buildings and shops are replaced by a delightful
enclave of black and white, walled merchants' homes ( machiya ) and
storehouses ( kura ) dating from the town's Edo-era heyday, when it was
an important centre for trade in rice and rush reeds. The compact Bikan
historical area, cut through by a narrow, weeping-willow-fringed canal,
in which swans drift and carp swim, is endowed with museums and
galleries, the best of which is the excellent Ohara Museum of Art ,
containing four separate halls for Western art, contemporary Japanese
art and local crafts. Hugely popular with tourists, Kurashiki can get
very busy during the day; to appreciate its charm most, stay overnight
and take an early-morning or evening stroll through the Bikan district,
or visit on Monday, when most of the museums and galleries are shut.
The Town
It's around a one-kilometre walk from Kurashiki Station along Kurashiki
Chuo-dori to the Bikan district of seventeenth-century granaries and
merchant houses, but, before heading there, peel off west after the
fourth set of traffic lights to check out Ohashi House (Tues-Sun
9am-5pm; ¥500). A poor samurai family, the Ohashi turned to trade and
prospered through salt production and land holdings. When they built
their home in 1796, it was designed like those of the high-ranking
samurai class, indicating how wealth was beginning to break down
previously rigid social barriers. After passing through a gatehouse and
small courtyard, you're free to wander through the spacious, unfurnished
tatami rooms.
Returning to the main road, the start of the Bikan district is marked by
the inevitable cluster of shops and dawdling tourists. Either side of
the willow-lined canal are beautifully preserved houses and warehouses,
including the Ohara House , with its typical wooden lattice windows, and
the adjacent Yurinso , the Ohara family guesthouse with distinctive
green roof tiles. Opposite, across a stone bridge decorated with carved
dragons, is the Ohara Museum of Art , the best of Kurashiki's many
galleries and museums. The next most engaging is the Kurashiki Museum of
Folkcraft (Tues-Sun: March-Nov 9am-5pm; Jan, Feb & Dec 9am-4.15pm; ¥700)
in a handsomely restored granary around the canal bend, next to a
stylish Meiji-era wooden building, which houses the tourist information
centre. The museum displays a wide range of crafts, including Bizen-yaki
pottery, baskets and traditional clothes, and has a small shop attached,
selling souvenirs a cut above those found in most of Kurashiki's other
giftshops.
A few doors down from the folkcraft museum, another excellent giftshop
attached to the Japan Rural Toy Museum (daily 8am-5pm; ¥500) sells
colourful, new versions of the traditional playthings on display in the
museum. Among this vast collection of dolls, spinning tops, animals and
suchlike - most faded and tatty with age and use - the best displays are
of huge kites and masks in the hall across the garden at the back of the
shop.
Rather than spending more yen at Kurashiki's other lacklustre museums,
retrace your steps north over the canal and amble past the
seventeenth-century merchant houses in the district of Honmachi , where
you'll find some artsy craft shops, or stroll up the hillside to
Tsurugata-yama Park , which includes the grounds of the simple shrine
Aichi-jinja and temple Honei-ji. If you have time, you could also potter
around Ivy Square , east of the canal, the ivy-covered late
nineteenth-century Kurashiki Spinning Mill redeveloped into a shopping,
museum and hotel complex. There's another good craft shop here, as well
as an atelier where you can try your hand at pottery (¥1800).
Grafted onto the town as if from another planet is Kurashiki Tivoli Park
(Mon-Fri 10am-8pm, Sat, Sun and holidays 9am-10pm; ¥2000), a mini-Danish
theme park in storybook colours, immediately north of Kurashiki Station.
Modelled on the famous Copenhagen funfair, the park (with its street
entertainers, giant Ferris wheel, Hansiatic palaces and shopping plazas,
landscaped gardens and artificial lakes) is amusingly kitsch, and has
some reasonably priced restaurants and cafés. However, the rides are all
tame and cost extra on top of the already expensive entrance fee. Hang
around, though, to watch the Hans Christian Andersen-inspired automatons
spring to life on the hour from inside the musical clock between the
station and the park.
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