I am curious about Japanese history, which led me to the city of Honjo in Saitama Prefecture. Not so much a tourist attraction, but it has an interesting history we can learn about. Take Haniwa and the hundreds of relics on show at the Honjo City Museum of History and Folklore.
Apparently, the building used to be a police station in 1883. Since then, this classic building has transformed into Museum of History and Folklore where you can find the smiling Haniwa, or hollow puppets. My visit to this museum was greeted by the friendly staff. They gave me brochures with complete photographs of the collection. You can access this museum for free, although it is not really large. It has two floors and you can easily follow the exhibition path throughout.
On the first floor, you can see a lot of relics from the ancient period of Japan. You can even see relics and stone from 15,000 years ago. The interesting exhibition at this museum has to be the Haniwa, so what exactly are they? Haniwa are terracotta figures first made in the early Kofun period, from the 3rd to 6th century. The Haniwa figures themselves were originally simple (cylindrical, house and bird shapes) but became more detailed and elaborate over time. At Honjo City Museum of History and Folklore, you can find examples of all of them, from the cute horses to mysterious human shapes. What makes the human Haniwa unique are the various customizations made which really makes Haniwa a special, unique mascot for Honjo City.
Most of the information in this museum is in Japanese. So if you don't know much, it's better to bring some information guides from tourism office. While I was in Honjo City, I stayed at the Hotel Route Inn Honjo Ekiminami and it's pretty close to the station.
