To the Lake Biwa Museum, Shiga Prefecture
A Lake Biwa Museum with the lake right in front of you
After leaving La Collina Omihachiman behind, we were finally into the last stretch of our trip in Shiga. Our next stop was the Lake Biwa Museum, Shiga Prefecture.
It also happened to be one of the venues in the Osaka-Kansai Expo stamp rally… haha.
Lake Biwa spread out just beyond the parking lot.
With no mountains pressing in around it, the view felt different from the image of lakes I’d had until then.
Starting our visit in the main building
By chance, this day was an admission-free day, so the museum was quite crowded. The museum, which focuses on lakes, opened in 1996 and completed a major six-year renovation in 2020.
I liked the concept message, “A Museum of the Power of Biwako”—it feels very contemporary.
The exhibits are divided into Exhibition Rooms A, B, and C, plus the aquarium gallery, and I started with Area A.
Exhibition Room A is themed “Four Million Years of the Lake and Us: Lake Biwa in Constant Change.” It focuses on Lake Biwa before humans existed, when the lake looked very different from how it does today.
In the diorama reconstructing the area as it was about 1.8 million years ago, there are even elephants.
It’s hard to imagine now that elephants once lived in Japan, isn’t it?
Next came Exhibition Room B, themed “Twenty Thousand Years of the Lake and Us: The History of Nature and Daily Life.”
And the first thing to greet you is, amazingly, a dragon!
Apparently, in Shiga Prefecture, which has deep ties to the lake, there are many shrines that enshrine dragons.
Exhibition Room B explores the relationship between people and Lake Biwa. In the latter half, there were also displays of things that were popular in different eras, including flip phones and Pikachu… haha.
Exhibition Room C focuses on animals under the theme “The Lake Today and Us: Nature Connected to Daily Life.”
There were even real animals on display, and apparently a great many birds live here as well. The sheer number of taxidermied specimens was impressive.
The aquarium gallery showcasing freshwater fish
The exhibits still weren’t over. Next was the “Aquarium Gallery,” one of Japan’s largest spaces for freshwater life displays.
At the entrance, there was a tunnel tank filled with fish from Lake Biwa.
I took a photo, but I forgot what kind of fish it was. Maybe sturgeon?
You can also look in on the “Conservation and Breeding Center.”
One last look at Lake Biwa
After making my way through all the exhibits, I took one more look at Lake Biwa to wrap up the museum visit.
The museum building itself looked quite impressive from the outside too, didn’t it?
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