Eliza came up last weekend to visit me in Eastern Hokkaido so the first thing I did was take her to Cha Cha World. It's a funky, castle-shaped toy museum that I've always driven past but haven't been to. I've heard from others who've been there that it's only worth going to once. I'm not sure if it's because I had lowered expectations, but the museum was awesome! I highly recommend it.
First of all, the place is shaped like a freaking castle! Second, as you walk in you're immediately surrounded by life-sized wooden statues and toy shelves. The first gallery we went to - and probably the best part of the museum - had a collection of neat shadow art, created by an artist who lived in the area (and is probably because of him that the toy museum exists in the first place). There's a huge display of single pieces, including some next to mirrors so it looks like it continues on to infinity, and a wall of panels depicting Japanese fairy tales. At the end of the gallery is an incredible 2-storey collage you could spent hours sitting and looking at. I was blown away by its size, incredible detail, artistic talent, and the fantastical elements of the display. It was amazing! It kind of reminded me of Zelda. From there we went upstairs to where they had elaborate wooden block displays and a play area where you can build your own wooden sculpture. Not being able to resist, we built our own precariously-balanced wooden tower then did the natural thing to do after laboring painstakingly over a piece of work... destroy it!
The rest of the museum consisted of a kid's play area, a section with wooden puzzles, wooden toys, and wooden marble mazes the scientist in me gravitated to, old-fashioned Japanese toys, complex wooden toys with moving parts, and a collection of other random toys. We only spent two hours there since we had a busy day, but I'd definitely go back there just to see the shadow art gallery again or have a woodblock-building contest. You can check out their website here (in Japanese):
http://city.hokkai.or.jp/~chacha/.
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First of all, the place is shaped like a freaking castle! Second, as you walk in you're immediately surrounded by life-sized wooden statues and toy shelves. The first gallery we went to - and probably the best part of the museum - had a collection of neat shadow art, created by an artist who lived in the area (and is probably because of him that the toy museum exists in the first place). There's a huge display of single pieces, including some next to mirrors so it looks like it continues on to infinity, and a wall of panels depicting Japanese fairy tales. At the end of the gallery is an incredible 2-storey collage you could spent hours sitting and looking at. I was blown away by its size, incredible detail, artistic talent, and the fantastical elements of the display. It was amazing! It kind of reminded me of Zelda. From there we went upstairs to where they had elaborate wooden block displays and a play area where you can build your own wooden sculpture. Not being able to resist, we built our own precariously-balanced wooden tower then did the natural thing to do after laboring painstakingly over a piece of work... destroy it! 
The rest of the museum consisted of a kid's play area, a section with wooden puzzles, wooden toys, and wooden marble mazes the scientist in me gravitated to, old-fashioned Japanese toys, complex wooden toys with moving parts, and a collection of other random toys. We only spent two hours there since we had a busy day, but I'd definitely go back there just to see the shadow art gallery again or have a woodblock-building contest. You can check out their website here (in Japanese): http://city.hokkai.or.jp/~chacha/.
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