I went to Nagoya City Museum

This will be a short article. My friend Paul (from Equador) and I went to the Nagoya City Museum. Actually, I had been meaning to go for a while. In fact, when I lived at the Kaikan (my first 6 months in Japan), the museum was just a few minutes walk down the road. Anyways, because we arrived later than we orgionally ment to, we only got to see the first two floors (in other words, we did not get to see the third floor which I THINK is mainly art stuff). Most of the objects we view came from Aichi prefecture (that's the prefecture that contains Nagoya). Most of it dates back to about 500 years, but some of the stuff that was up stairs dated back to the Paleolithic period (mostly jars and arrow heads). Unfortunately, they do not allow pictures of objects on the first floor (I think the flash can deteriate the old paintings) and they keep the objects under very dim light so it was not easy to see in detail. All of the pictures are from the second floor (there are explainations of the pictures below the pictures).










(This picture is of an old fire pump. You can see the hose near the wheel and the big object on the cart is the actual pump. It looks just like the other fire pumps that we see in the U.S. from this era)











(I took this picture as the museum people were asking us to leave, it was closing, so I do not know the significance of all of the names on this flag. It was in a section of pictures from Japanese schools, so maybe it is the names of the graduating class, but I'm not sure because I didn't take the time to read since they were closing the museum.











(Of course, everyone knows what this is a picture of. No real explanation needed. Maybe I need to work on my Zen Buddist pose a little more)










(This is a picture of a really old jar. The museum calls it the Big Jar. Much of it could not be restored as you can see from the picture. The parts made of cement, and not stone, must have been crushed into dirt or may have never been recoved.)









(I saved the best for last. If you click on the picture and read words below it says "Governing the People." Now if you look at what they used to govern the people you will see a bunch of objects that look as though they are used to punish/torture people. The reason for that is because, that is what they are used for. I guess most museums have a small section like this no matter what country one is in. I just think the title is kind of strange, but it does make since I guess.)
Anyways, I'm really busy trying to finish my reports in the last minute. I got distracted over the weekend and did not work on them at all. I went over to my friends house the other day and a lot of other friends showed up as well, so we played Uno(a card game) for a while. Other than that, I have to write a bunch of research reports for the internships I have to do over the summer break (which starts in about a month from now). Not a whole lot going on really. The lab trip is coming up again in August. If I decide to go I will take lots of pictures to post on my blog again (just like I did last year). Anyways, that's all for today. Thanks for stopping by. See you around.
Quote of the day is by Brendan Gill
"Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious."

Don't know when I will write another article, but I will do it before a month.
-Adios