Toyama museum not for wimps

One day, Pangzi came home complaining of bruises after sports. During my time, we picked ourselves up and fought on even on one good limb.

Are children made of glass nowadays?

In order to show Pangzi real glass, I took him to a Toyama museum, where glass art was the centrepiece.

The Toyama Glass Art Museum is meant to be one of the most prominent in Central Japan. Located in a sleepy city, this Toyama museum took us an almost two-hour drive to reach from Takayama.

“Daddy, why are we going to a Toyama museum? I meant Toyota museum!” Pangzi said.

“This Toyama museum has a collection of contemporary glass art pieces spanning three floors. How can we miss it while we are in Japan?”

The exterior of the Toyama museum looked as impressive as travel guide photos suggested, exuding an air of modern class.

However, once we got inside, we realised that the building actually also housed the city library. Most of the visitors were there for books not glass. Not that it mattered.

“Don’t touch anything here,” I warned Pangzi. “Glass is extremely fragile.”

We came to a section of the Toyama museum named the Glass Art Garden, where glass had been made into interesting ornamental artefacts that looked like Medussa’s hair.

“Daddy, why is glass here so beautiful?”

“Glass can be an art form with limitless possibilities thanks to the way it is blown and twisted. This Toyama museum is dedicated to celebrating contemporary glass art.”

There was a life-size boat containing glass balls of various designs and colours. Pangzi started to fondle them before I intervened.

“Didn’t I tell you not to touch? Everything breaks easily!”

I went on to bore him with details of how glass could be whipped into shape, and what looked fine on the outside could be brittle inside. I also couldn’t help but added that boys ought to be strong and not behave like glass.

This Toyama museum wasn’t the largest, and could be covered in less than an hour. To think that we’d come all the way here…

“Daddy, my legs are aching from all the walking. Can we move on?” Pangzi pleaded.

Wimp!

We were here: