Samurai Museum - December 29, 2019

We are officially in the middle of winter and it is cold outside. Since David is still getting over the flu we decided an indoor activity would be best this weekend. The Samurai Museum fit the bill nicely. We took the train to Shinjuku to purchase tickets, but had some time to kill until our tour. We stopped for lunch at a ramen restaurant and then wandered around exploring Shinjuku. We found Godzilla....

...but managed to make it back in time for our tour.

The tour was very informative. We learned that Japan is currently and has previously been ruled by Emperors; however, there was a period of time (1185-1868) when the Samurais were in power. I did not know how colorful their armor was. Below is a picture of a child's ceremonial uniform. The masks often had mustaches to make the samurai appear more scary.

Their armor consisted of small plates of metal held together by thread.

The samurais had different social classes. The wider shoulder plates indicated someone from a higher class.

Samurais would personalize their headgear to appear taller, to channel the energy they wanted to project (for example- a dragon for strength), and/or to show their family crest.

Their shoes were made with bear skin in hopes of channeling the bear's strength.

We saw what their saddle and stirrups were like. They let us hold one of the stirrups. Those stirrups are solid metal and VERY heavy.

The sword room was interesting. One of the samurai was said to have incredible reflexes. He was supposed to be able to catch a fly in the air with his chopsticks, and he had two flies on his sword handle to showcase his skill.

The gun room was also interesting. The Japanese only made guns for a short period of time. Their guns look different from anything I had seen before. They use western guns now.

We got to see a demonstration of a sword fight. It was really well done.

It is said that this samurai's armor was the inspiration for Darth Vader's costume.

This is a picture of the man said to be the "Last Samurai."

They had Samurai costumes and kimonos available for people to try on and have their pictures taken, but we decided not to do that today.

Two weeks after our tour we were at an antique market. At the market we saw samurai sword guards (tsuba) and stirrups. I am sure these items were at previous antique markets and we had walked past them not knowing what we were looking at. I am so glad we did the tour as it helped fill in the gaps in our knowledge as we continue to explore. Unfortunately, knowing what things are makes them even cooler and it gets hard to resist not buying every 'cool' thing we see.