A Museum devoted to Sand

A while ago we adventured out into Japan and drove a couple hours or so to the Nima Sand Museum. This was super exciting to me as this museum plays a part in one of my favorite mangas, Sunadoke (which literally means hourglass.) In America, the manga is called Sand Chronicles. Anyhoo, super excited to visit. The Museum is near the beach of the Sea of Japan. It houses the world's largest hour glass, as well as a ton of other hourglasses. It's not a huge museum, but it was interesting. I got to learn all about sand, and the different kinds of sand on the beaches of Japan. I probably would have learned more if I could read more Japanese. Still, super awesome!

The Sand Museum!

Ryan, Saki, Kayla, Michael

 

Ryan and Kayla are super excited about the sunadoke. They were everywhere. All different sizes, different color sand, different materials, etc.

The worlds largest hourglass. It was pretty big. It's a full calendar year.

My ticket and brochure to the museum.

A duplicate of the hourglass so you can see it up close. It certainly was the largest hourglass I've ever seen.

Squeaking sand! One of the beaches nearby is famous for it's squeaking sand. When you walk on it, or in our cases push on it with a pestle and mortar, it makes a squeaking sound. The sand has to be dry, and unfortunately it was raining, so we didn't get to go to the beach to walk on it.

Ryan is fascinated by the squeaking sounds. Actually, I probably told him to make that face. lol.

There was a room where you could look at different kinds of sand under a microscope, or sort through sand with tweezers and a magnifying glass. Saki found a tiny itty bitty shell!

When we got a our tickets, we also got a postcard to make sand art with. They had a bunch of trays with colored sand. You pulled pieces pf your postcard to reveal the sticky postcard underneath (like a backwards sticker!) and dropped sand on it with tiny spoons. Above is Ryan working on his. He's color blind, which made figuring out which color sand to put where a little interesting for him.

My beautiful finished postcard.

This was a station where you could make a map of the different kinds of sand found on Japanese beaches.

 My beautiful sand map!

They had a display about the manga Sunadoke!

Stairs down to the gift shop. What a fun day!