The Museum Matsushima — Attraction in Matsushima

If you think you've known enough about musical instruments just come here. In a such small building there is located dozens of auto playing musical instruments from sizes of matchbox to the two floor structure. The most impressive thing for me was the way those instruments are working. This is just completely blow my mind even tho I'm working with AI and stuff... Geniuses! Staff is patient and helpful, they will show and tell you (on the good enough English) how does all works. As a plus there's a quite small exhibition of "Europeans musical instruments in Japan", but it's fully on Japanese so I just didn't understood anything. What's surprised more is a collection of works of the most famous clothes designers and models (don't want to spoil anything so will attach only approves that there is such a thing). In the museum there is shop where you can buy lot's of matchboxes from 1,000+ ¥ with almost any music genre you want to hear, good support for a nice place. Also there's cafe where you can buy some sweets, and I do recommend gelato and tea, yes it's rare to find this kind of tea in Japan. Overall it is good place to visit. Won't scream "10/10" in case not everyone would be satisfied by this kind of museum, but anyways give it a try...

Just looking at the name, you wouldn't understand what kind of museum it is, but it's a music box museum.

You can listen to a music box concert approximately every hour.

You should definitely listen to or see this performance. If you don't , it will be a memory worth less than half the price of the ticket. On the other hand, if you do , it will surely be a memory that will last a lifetime.

It completely changes your concept of what a music box is. You'll understand immediately if you watch a video. This isn't your typical wind-up music box that plays a gentle tune, but plays a mechanical concert. And there are various tones, including drums and wind instruments.

Listening to it, the tune made me think about the creators' extraordinary level of skill. I'm not an expert of music boxes, so I couldn't imagine how scores were created, or what kind of scores could make so many different sounds.

These days, we can program and play similar sounds digitally, but these music boxes were made in an era before that the technology didn't exist. So I was struck by the passion, desire, and pure obsession of the people who set out to make them with analog technology.

I felt human strength, or perhaps, something closer to human terror. And I thought humans can accomplish anything they set their minds to.

I was also moved because they perform modern songs like "Paprika." It made me happy to know that there are still artisans who can create these scores, and I was filled with respect that these historical items can still be active today.

The scale of this performance, both in terms of size and what it accomplishes, made me feel that it was worth far more than the ticket price.

I don't know much about music boxes, but I think this musiam should be a major tourist attraction. But it wasn't very crowded, so I wrote this review to support.

When I traveled to Matsushima, I was glad to see that tourist attractions like Matsushima islands and Zuiganji Temple had survived the Great East Japan Earthquake.

I don't know if these music boxes were also affected, but it made me feel a personal sense of relief and happiness that it runs again, whether it survived or was restored.

As a side note, the trial listening machine for the Orpheus music box in the gift shop on the first floor is also fantastic. It's a famous, long-established brand, and a normal-sized music box costs about 20,000 to 30,000 yen. Even a novice like me can immediately realize how good the sound quality is. I highly recommend checking that out,...

An incredibile Museum for an incredibile experience! 3 different collections that Will send you back in time! The Orgel collection offer a big variety of 18th and 19th century fantastic Orgel! In the main room, is also possibile to listen to the concert of two big and fantastic orgels. They are the biggest in Japan and are really Amazing! The mode collection offers stunning fashon clothes from for the early times of Chanel, Balenciaga, Vuitton. But also wedding and cocktail french dresses from early 1900 to late 1800!! Finally, the toy collection, for the toy lovers, is a must see! Located at olny 15 minutes walking from Matsushima Kaigan station, this incredibile Museum...