★★★★★ 5.0
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NYK Maritime Museum
Workers are hammering and painting right behind these Renaissance walls, getting ready to reopen Japan's most ship-crazy museum in 2026! You're standing in front of the 1936 NYK building on Kaigandori Street - that's "Ocean Avenue" in English - and this gorgeous stone facade survived World War Two when 185 giant ships from this very company got sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Only ONE passenger ship made it through the whole war alive! This Renaissance-style building replaced the original NYK office that got completely flattened in the Great Kanto Earthquake, and when you peek through those tall windows, you'll spot massive ship models waiting inside that are as long as school buses. NYK was the very first Japanese company to run passenger ships across the Pacific - imagine being the first kid to sail from Yokohama to Shanghai back in 1875, that's like 150 years ago or about your great-great-great-grandmother's time! Look up at that red company flag with two stripes - those stripes tell the secret story of two rival shipping companies that had to become best friends and merge together. When this treasure chest reopens next year, you'll hunt for a 155-year-old rainwater tank and count ship models that once carried fancy dinners across entire oceans!
Did You Know?
- The NYK Maritime Museum houses a unique historical artifact—the Tensui-Oke rain barrel, which features an early Mitsubishi logo combining the Iwasaki family crest and the Tosa domain’s Yamanouchi clan crest, symbolizing the intertwined origins of Japan’s maritime modernization and the Mitsubishi conglomerate.
- The museum features interactive exhibits, such as a compass-shaped switch on the floor that, when pressed, activates archival footage and narrates the stories of key figures like Yataro Iwasaki and later Mitsubishi executives, bringing Japan’s maritime history to life in a tangible way for visitors of all ages.
- Among its poignant displays is the rusted ship name board of the Noto Maru, a vessel bombed and sunk during World War II and later recovered from the sea—a powerful, lesser-known memorial to the thousands of civilian and military lives lost when commercial ships were requisitioned for war, highlighting both the museum’s educational depth and its role in preserving collective memory.