Yamabe-no-Michi Cultural Hall

     

Today, we’ll be visiting the town of Kusano, in Kurume city (map). In many ways it’s just an ordinary, out-of-the-way, rural town, but the fact that there are several historically interesting places dotted about can almost be considered ordinary for Japan. Something I’m still not quite used to having come from Australia.

The fine specimen of a building below started out life in 1914 as the Nakano Hospital. Today, it’s the Yamabe-no-Michi Cultural Hall (formerly, Nakano Hospital). That’s 山辺道文化館（旧中野病院）in Japanese. Quite the mouthful no matter the language. Without having reached it’s 100th birthday, it and a small companion building are both registered tangible cultural properties.

I can’t really say that it looks particularly Japanese or even Asian (Oops, non PC?). Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. It was built about half a century after Japan had emerged from its self-imposed isolation, and it seems foreign influences had become more-and-more common place by this time.

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  • http://profiles.google.com/thepoolofzen Matthew Cowles

    Let me guess… it was a cloudy day?

  • Anonymous

    Haha. You know, it took me about a minute to get that. You’ll be happy to know that every pixel belongs to THIS picture. Hahaha, I’m still chuckling.

    The reason it’s glowing is that I went crazy using a Tone-mapping plug-in. I admit, I was a little heavy handed.

    Perhaps, I’m no better than those who air-brush celebs.

  • http://twitter.com/kawaiiculture Kawaii Culture

    Haha, I like the image. It definitely looks like it’s soaked in history. Maybe looks a bit haunted. Love the lights shining from inside.

  • http://www.budgettrouble.com/ Anna Ikeda

    It looks so… foreign! LOL! I’d expect it to house a museum of some sort.
    And I’ve see you’ve been HDRing again? ;-)

  • Anonymous

    Yeah, it does look a bit haunted. I could easily imagine Scooby Doo & Shaggy happening upon the place, having some adventure until finally pulling a latex mask off of some grumpy old man.

    Well spotted with the lights. I hadn’t seen them until you mentioned it.

  • Anonymous

    I’m surprised I omitted saying so in the body of the post but it is a museum of sorts, a museum & a tea & coffee joint.

    Yes, and I think the HDR setting was titled Radioactive.

  • Anonymous

    I’m surprised I omitted saying so in the body of the post but it is a museum of sorts, a museum & a tea & coffee joint.

    Yes, and I think the HDR setting was titled Radioactive.

  • Anonymous

    A radioactived museum. Now that is a sure fire way to draw crowds.

    I love foreign buildings like this and want to try and visit them all in Japan! (amongst other stuff that I wanted to do and visit in Japan)

  • Anonymous

    There are quite a few of these buildings around. It’s only been recently that I started taking photos of them. I guess I’ll have to backtrack.

    I, like you, have many things on the to-see list.

  • http://bigger-in-japan.blogspot.com/ Biggie

    nice Taisho architecture. There’s still a bit of that around where I live.

  • Anonymous

    Thanks Biggie, for the comment & for dropping by. You tease me a bit by not mentioning where.