Hey everyone!
Today's post will be fun because I had a lot of fun today even though the exhibition (in the title) wasn't really great.
Firstly I biked about 60km from where I live to Amsterdam (that's to and from). That's always pretty fun (not being sarcastic!). Secondly I went to a Japan exhibition in a place called Tropenmuseum.
The exhibition can be pretty much summed up in one sentence: A nerd's bedroom has more Japan-related items than the exhibition.
It's also only about the size of five nerd's bedrooms poorly utilized. The collection is very small.
Let's go room by room (actually not sure if 'section' doesn't fit better):
Room/Section 1: a meagre collection of a few comics and three gaming consoles where you could play some weird-ass bad graphics fighting game and a drumming game (you could play the drums with a stick and it would be translated into something or other on the screen). Also a big screen on which random Japanese songs were played
Room/Section 2: about four man-sized dummies wearing weird but colourful dresses, a 12+ section that should really have been 18+ and was definitely NSFW (also included tentacle pr0n), a small, ugly robot that spoke poorly about stuff and where you could interact by pressing buttons on its screen, and a sort-of robot-like statue in silver plastic that I don't know the purpose of.
Room/Section 3: Another huge screen with intros/scenes from weird films, a 12+ horror section that at the moment of my being there showed something from Godzilla, some figurines (you know the small ones from various popular series?). The coolest thing about this room/section was probably the life-size samurai statue in full armour with two wooden swords and the samurai sword with authenticity certificate (although this was only a blade and lacked a handle and was also encased in glass so it felt like looking at a simple knife).
Room/Section 4: some scrolls and paintings, at the end of the exhibit walls that looked like they were made of instant noodles (not sure if on purpose - it wasn't really obvious enough - or if that's just how it always looks). Inside these noodle-walls was some pottery. It looked like someone tried to set up a Japanese tea ceremony except there was no teapot/cups so they had to stack bowls instead. This was simply a stack of bowls and on two or three other pedestals had been placed more bowls.
As you can tell from the rooms the exhibition severely lacked:
A tea ceremony set (what was up with the random bowls in section 4 I will never understand) or even just a single teapot with Japanese style painting on it
Kintsugi (art of fixing of broken ceramics by sealing cracks/putting it back together with gold)
Chopsticks (you could argue those aren't 'typically' Japanese as they're used elsewhere as well... but if you're going to explain Japanese culture then maybe eating habits should be a big factor)
Instant Ramen (???) or ANYTHING at all food related
Kimonos/Yukata's/etc. (there was only a small paragraph on some plaque without even a picture explaining this traditional wear)
Geta (Japanese sandals)
The onsen culture
Cherry Blossoms
And so on and so forth. The exhibition was therefore quite disappointing to me. It was the bare minimum of Japanese pop culture (comics and animations - and then not even that fully 'explained'), a paragraph on a single wall why robots are so popular/important (apparently it's because they have a soul according to Shintoism), figurines, a samurai in armour with swords, and some scrolls and paintings.
I know nothing new about Japan that I (and probably most people) didn't before.
Another huge letdown was the food corner. This of course was a part of the whole museum (there were other exhibits which were equally tedious as the Japanese so I won't get into them) but I kind of hoped there would be SOME Japanese or special food as they promised on their website. According to the website you could get tasty treats from different parts of the world. According to the actual menu you have the choice between a ham and cheese toast and some lemon cake (and in the lemon cake cylinder was a literally a half moon end of cut cake because apparently they didn't care to remove the leftovers they couldn't sell but just left them in there).
I would personally not recommend anyone to visit it. It's a much better choice to wait until March/April for the next ComicCon if you want a nerdy Japanese experience. (That being said I also plan to visit TomoFair in January because I've never been - and they have food!)
Thirdly I biked back in the rain (but that was also quite enjoyable - still no sarcasm here - and I had bubble tea before I left so no complaints there).
WriteBot wishes you a good night/day. Cheers!
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