Matsumoto

We said Sayonara to Tokyo on Thursday as we were headed off to Matsamuto in the Japanese Alps.

Cheryl has reunited with me after finally making it to Japan from Vancouver. She befriended another woman who she had met while in the line waiting to get her seats rearranged. Mackie was a Japanese woman who had been living in Winnipeg for 20 years and was heading back to Japan for a family reunion. They shared a hotel room in Richmond for 2 nights before their flight left and also spent a day in Vancouver visiting Stanley park. Cheryl enjoyed the company.

When I told some of my co-musicians in my Baroque group in Edmonton that I was visiting Japan, Maria who is a music teacher suggested that I visit Dr. Shinichi Suzuki's house. I don't think Maria had any idea where the house was located and even where we were planning to go. To humor her I told her that I would look into it not thinking it would amount to much. When I did look into the location of his memorial house I realized that it was located less than 1 km from where we were staying in Matsamuto. Who is Dr. Shinichi Suzuki you may ask? He was a visionary musician educator who developed the Suzuki School of Music with the concept that children could learn music at a very early age. Dr Suzuki moved to Matsumoto in 1946 and lived in the house from 1952 to 1994. Our 3 children had all Suzuki music so we were all ingratiated to Suzuki music and what an important worldwide role Dr. Suzuki had played in music education. After arriving and checking into our accommodation we headed off to the museum. We were quite excited but when we arrived it looked pretty closed. We squeezed through a partially closed barrier to at least get a closer look at the house and tried the door and it was open. The museum was officially closed but there was an administrator working and he was generous enough to give us a tour. We saw Dr Suzuki's music room, study and sitting room. In the Japanese tradition, he had a kneeling desk. The guide also showed us the 8 track tape where Dr. Suzuki would listen to tapes of students recorded from all over Japan and probably at first around the world when they completed each level of music. He would listen to 40 of these tapes a day a write a precis of their performance. We also saw his ashtray collection as he smoked 3 packs of cigarettes per day. The music room was filled with accolades and honorary degrees from around the world. It was very touching and I so glad that Maria made the suggestion.

Today we were up early as we are still jet-lagged and thought it would be good to take on Matsamuto's most notable tourist attraction early before it became too crowded. The Matsamuto castle is a large wooden castle dating back to 150 that was located in a large moated and walled keep. It was the last place of retreat if your enemies attacked you. Think Shogun and Samurai warriors. Normally I don't go into castles as they are better from the outside than the inside but when will I ever be in Japan again. It was neat to walk into the castle and see the beautifully built wooden structure that was over 400 years old.These castles were susceptible to fire and there are only 4 others still in existence in Japan. I imagined what it would have been like as a Samurai under siege in the castle. Because we were at the castle right at the opening and there were no crowds we whisked through the castle in 30 minutes whereas with crowds it typically takes 2 hours to get through the castle as there are many treacherous stairs and things can get very congested. We wandered through town looking into shops and admiring the very ornate manhole covers. We came across a beautiful building with a large pendulum clock on the outside and realized that we had arrived at the clock museum. Mr Chikazo Honda, a wealthy engineer had donated his watch collection to the Matsamuto Museum and they had finally built a dedicated museum for the collecting.All of the watches and clocks were functional and it was so neat listening to them chime on the quarter hour. My favourite clocks were the swing clock and rolling ball clock.

We continued our meandering walk through town stopping at a bakery and coffee shop. After a break at our Air BnB we finished our activities for the day at the Matsumoto art gallery where we were dazzled by the brilliant Polka Dart art of Yayoi Kusama, a native of Matsumoto. The art gallery would have been difficult to have been missed as the front of the building was covered in polka dots and there were large ceramic flowers guarding the front door of the museum. The other interesting collection of art we saw was of these two painters who had lived in Matsamuto and had painted the Japanese Alps. It reminded me of home.

The other mention of famous sons of Matsumoto is Tomoyuki "Yūkō" Tanaka who created and produced the Godzilla movies from 1954 to 1994. This was born witness by a very large Godzilla model in the train station. Given my childhood proclivity for Godzilla movies, I thought it was important to bear witness to this fact.Read more