Top 5 Specialty Museums in Echizen, Chubu

Reviewed By PapagenaandPapageno - Los Angeles, United States

My artist daughter found this paper making village and this studio/museum in particular online--Echizen seems to be the region and Udatsu the village in particular. A gorgeous, alpine-like area 90 minutes north of Osaka by bullet train, a taxi ride in from Takefu. Echizen region home to five traditional arts--bladed tools (knives), lacquer, chests, ceramics (we saw some Echizen ceramics from the 15th century at the ceramics museum in Osaka), and this village--paper. For ten generations. I liked this studio/museum in that it was incredibly old and everything seemed super-traditional. They suit you up in rubber boots and aprons and you are making this the old-school way. My daughter and I made two large sheets of washi paper each--and our instructor was incredible. This was not a class, it was a personalized, individual experience. The woman who runs it has pretty good english, the instructor none, but communicates wonderfully. I was in heaven! had no idea how involved it was--afterwards we went to the little paper museum--so much more understanding now, and felt we just cracked the door on a whole world of paper. Yay! New obsession. Haven't dared to use the paper yet but it turned out great. When you contact them through their link (see below), someone writes back who has ok english and sets it up for you. The fall color was amazing, the village lovely, there are about 50 little 'factories' along the river, you can see the steam rising amid the tall pines as you walk up to a beautiful temple (about 10 minutes) to the paper making goddess... The soba in the village was better than anything we'd tasted on our trip. A high point of our trip to Japan.