Japan Travel - Japanese Prehistory: Togariishi Museum of Jomon Archaeology

Hey hey everybody this is Ronan Dave coming at you from inside a prehistoric Japanese house reconstructed of course. This dwelling is from the Jomon era. Jomon era is roughly 14,000 BCE to about 300 BCE give or take a few hundred to a few thousand years here and there. I am at the Togari Ishii Jomon Archaeological Museum. This place is in Chino. Chino is a city in Nagano Prefecture. It's a rather small town but every six years this place gets packed with people to see the famous Onbashiri, Onbashira festival where they take logs down the mountain side and then later erect them at the local shrine. As for the museum I was very impressed with it. I have seen a lot of Jomon pottery in my day but here I saw some of the most unique that I have seen in my stay in Japan. A lot of their pottery comes from what is called the middle Jomon period which is about 5,000 years ago so 3,000 BCE to about 2,000 or 1,000 BCE and that period is really special because that's where they were I feel that's when the Jomon were their most artistic and it seemed like they really went into abstract art that you can see in their pottery and their Dogu. Dogu is their figurines, dolls if you will. Two very fascinating dolls were found in this area one is called the Jomon Venus the other looks like a bit like an alien if I'm being honest here. It was into the Jomon Venus they believe was related with child birth as many of these Dogu are believed to have been used for but the the other one the the mass goddess as they call it was found near I believe the cemetery of the Jomon cemetery so it may have been used in a ritual with death was rather unusual for Dogu statues. If you're in the Nagano area I definitely think it's worth checking out especially if you like archaeology and prehistory this is the part of Japan that a lot of people don't really know and even Japanese tend to forget themselves only learning it in school and the occasional NHK program that they usually turn to the other channel for to watch Talento, watch other people, watch TV but yeah I definitely recommend if you have the opportunity to come to this museum. It's a little difficult to get out to because it's if you want to walk from the station it's about two hours or you can take a rather infrequent bus to get here. If you come in winter time like I did make sure you bring your boots and not your tennis shoes my feet are going to be wet for quite a while and I hope I can survive this experience without getting pneumonia. Anyway so definitely recommend Togari-Ishi Jomon Archaeological Museum. So this is Rodan and Dave. See you!