While in Japan, We ended up going to the Meiji-Mura museum near Nagoya and it is a fascinating place. The highlight of the museum are the parts of the Frank Lloyd Wright Imperial Hotel that they have preserved, but the museum would have been worth going to without it.

It has a strange sort of sci-fi quality because many of the buildings are so out of context, being basically late 19th century urban buildings which are placed in a park surrounded by a forest. With some of the buildings, bridges and such, it was possible only to save a portion of the building. This adds to the unworldly, sometimes movie-set quality.

That said, the efforts that have been made to collect and save these buildings is astounding, and as a group they are fascinating. In many cases, not just the buildings have been saved, but rooms are furnished as they would have been in the Meiji period, giving you a better idea of how, prisons, hospitals, churches, schools, and other buildings would have actually functioned.

The museum was quite empty while we were there (on a Friday in March) but everything seemed to be open and available for viewing.

A couple of notes about getting there: trains from Nagoya seem to run fairly frequently to Inuyama but it is worth identifying your specific train using www.hyperdia.com. When you reach the train station in Inuyama, the bus to Meiji-Mura is quite clearly marked. The bus schedule seemed to be fairly good, with buses running about every 20 - 30 minutes. There is a bus which departs the park at 4:55pm, just before the park closes, and another about 5:15pm, just after, so you can stay right up to closing.

There are restaurants with adequate if not particularly exciting food, so that you can spend the day there. We spent about 4 hours touring the museum. We rushed a bit, and didn't go into all the buildings that we would have liked to, but we did feel that we were able to see most of the things that we wanted to (and that was quite a bit). If you are into history and exploring, you could easily spend a whole day there.

Short descriptions of the buildings (longer than on the website) describe the original location of the building, its purpose and some of the important aspects of the building. The Imperial Hotel has a few detailed exhibits of some of the fixtures that were included in the building.

Note: If you have read about a bikkuri coupon which allows you to purchase the round-trip fare from Nagoya with admission to the museum at the train station in Nagoya from Meitetsu, this service no longer exists. We had to buy each service independently. It may have been possible to buy a combined ticket for the train and bus fare, but our Japanese and the ticket agent's English was not up to the challenge. However, we were able to confirm at the museum that the combined fare/museum admission option no longer existed.

P. S. Many thanks to LapLap and others who recommended the Meiji-Mura museum.