Outing to Chiba - Archaeological Finds and Samurai Houses (11-21-2023)

Tuesday was yet another long and adventurous day! Our group made another excursion outside of Tokyo, spent largely in the prefecture of Chiba.

Josh and I met up with Stacy and Nando at Asakusa Station and boarded and transfered on several trains (and a monorail) to reach a historical landmark known as the Kasori Shell Mounds. It's well off the beaten path, and seemingly no tourists aside from us were visiting, not even Japanese tourists. This was yet another little town that felt more inhabited by middle aged to senior citizens, all just trying to walk around parks for exercise and walk their dogs. One of our first visits was to the museum. Outside was a wooden standee where visitors could stick their faces through holes for photos. The image was of two dogu statues--old figures found in archeological sites with little known about them, but sometimes suspected of being related to fertility. To this day you still often see dogu pop up in Japanese media. I've personally seen them throughout anime and video games, seemingly randomly. Josh and I took a photo with the standee, of course. I don't know if we did it right.

All over this particular part of Chiba, a specific mascot could be found--on signs, on manhole covers, everywhere! This was the mascot dog Kasoriinu, who represented the Kasori Shell Mounds. A statue of Kasoriinu was found inside the museum, along with a standee explaining who he is and what his role is to this historic landmark. I ended up leaving with a cute Kasoriinu keychain that I immediately added to my backpack.

The museum itself was fairly interesting as well. Not a huge museum, but enough to show some historical significance to the country. The shell mounds are almost exactly as they sound--places where archaeologists have found enormous piles of sea shells, as a combination not just of what had washed up along the coast of the country, but also where people had thrown shells they were disposing of, among other refuse (in some cases including finding the bodies of people), all over the course of thousands of years, in tons of places around the edges of Japan. This particular one is the largest and probably the most famous (despite there being seemingly so few people here on this particular day). Seeing artifacts like pots and accessories left behind was interesting.

Outside the museum were also recreations of huts, showing how people once lived. One hut was closed, and as we were trying to get a closer look, a man walking his dog shouted over to us to let us know there was another one open that we could walk into and check it. People seemed genuinely happy to help us see these historic places, which was nice. We walked into the second hut, and you could smell smoke inside pretty strongly. It seemed like they'd been using it to show off how people would cook inside. Further to the center of the park was a place to walk straight through the center of a mound, where you could see how it had layered up over thousands of years.

After wrapping up at the shell mounds, we moved a little farther away to the city of Sakura, also in Chiba prefecture, to head over to some old houses where various samurai once lived. When I was learning that this was one of the places we were going to stop, I did some research on the area before we headed over. While watching a video of someone else exploring the samurai houses, I saw there was a cardboard cutout of an anime character sitting inside this old, traditional Japanese house. I was now super curious about what that was doing in there, and learned it was from a mobile game titled "Tenrin no Sakura", also called "Tenrin's Sakura", which is a turn-based RPG that has been translated into Japanese, available through American app stores. I can't say that the English is very good, but it's a fascinating means of generating tourism. It feels pretty clear that the developers created the game using RPG Maker, but that's fine, of course. It's a perfectly playable game that leans into some local lore from the city of Sakura, and also includes locations and discounts for local restaurants and other businesses. When we arrived at Sakura Station, I found the information booth, where they were still selling merchandise from Tenrin no Sakura, and purchased an acrylic stand featuring the main character of the game. The lady in the information booth seemed really happy that I was even there, and she also handed me a postcard featuring art from the game. That was a pretty cool little bonus.

It was a short trek over to the samurai houses themselves, up quite a steep hill. There are quite a few houses, but we were unfortunately running out of time n our day, so we only had time enough to visit the first three houses. Talking to the guy at the ticket counter was entertaining enough, and it gave me a chance to have a full conversation in Japanese. He was interested to learn where we came from, too, so I'm pretty glad we were able to be an interesting part of his day. The houses themselves may have been relocated from their original locations, but it was cool to look at what these houses may have really looked like a few hundred years ago. Seeing some cool samurai armor at the same time was also a nice bonus. And sure enough, the cardboard cutouts of the characters from Tenrin no Sakura were still there. I'm glad they were, because the game has been out for three years now, and I worried all their stuff might have been gone by now.

Once we were done, it was almost a two-hour trip by train back to Asakusa, where we stopped off to eat kebab. Unfortunately, the guy was out of the things that I specifically wanted, but I landed on a lamb kebob, and it tasted quite good. Just wasn't thrilled with the fact that the guy had two separate sets of prices for the exact same thing, set up in such a way that seemed like it was meant to deliberately confuse people. We ended up paying more than I expected, and I admit, that quite upset me. But the food was a good way to round out the evening.

I've got more to discuss about the next day, but that can come with the next entry!