Toyama Castle and Matsukura Park visited, we continued on foot for another 15 minutes to the Toyama Glass Art Museum:
I wasn’t expecting much from the Glass Art Museum but had also neglected to do much pre-trip reading about it. The Museum has a ¥1,500 admission fee for adults (no admission charges for kids). This admission fee includes the entry into the exhibit areas on levels 2, 3 and 5 – while the ¥200 minimum admission fee is only for levels 4 and 6.
Is the higher fee worth it? Absolutely. The paid admission exhibition halls aren’t very big, but the artwork is just unusual. The sixth level was hosting a permanent exhibition from famed master of contemporary glass art, Dale Chihuly, was fantastic, as was the Finnish glass art exhibit that is on show these few months; all intricate in design and craftsmanship. Several of the exhibit levels prohibit photography, and those that allow it also disallow flash photography, and ask that pictures are only for private use and not posted on social media. Videography is not allowed at all. And each exhibit floor had a number of museum staff to make sure that rules are not broken: they were certainly very observant and will immediately cut in if you do something that’s not permitted. I’ve posted just a few photos below, but they really look even more incredible in reality.
Like Toyama Castle Park, we didn’t observe any other international tourists, but there were a few locals also visiting. I certainly didn’t expect to enjoy this museum as much as I did, and we easily spent an hour in the place as we took our time to explore each exhibition hall.
Just a few minutes walk from the Toyama Glass Art Museum is Ikeda Yasubei Shoten (Traditional Medicine Shop). We weren’t sure about this, but since it was in the vicinity and a couple of other travel bloggers had also mentioned it, we included it in our itinerary. The place was established in 1936, and is well known on account of the time when Toyama was an established center for the production of pharmaceutical products. There is no admission charge to the place, as it’s a working shop and not a museum – but I got the distinctive sense that the shop staff was largely ignoring us as we were clearly gaijin who were there to take a look and had no intention of actually buying anything! We stayed for five minutes, then left as we didn’t really find anything interesting.
Right after we left, we observed a bus pull up and stop at the main road outside the shop, and out poured a large group of what looked like local tourists, and they went straight into the shop. Looks like the five of us were totally the wrong target crowd for this shop.
So, if you’re planning for a visit to Toyama, go for the Glass Art Museum, and this Ikeda Yasubei Shoten (Traditional Medicine Shop) only as a filler if you have time to kill. But you won’t miss anything if you skipped it.
Not far from the medicine shop is a shopping arcade strip that we crossed the road to get to. Most retail places weren’t opened in the late morning, but we were on the hunt for a lunch place. More on that in the next post!