Webmaster visited Endo Shellfish Museum (Endo-kairui-hakubutsukan) in Manazuru Town before last week.
Access: Tokyo (local train 1:35) Manazuru (bus 0:20) Cape Manazuru @, or Tokyo (shinkansen 0:37) Odawara (local train 0:13) Manazuru (bus 0:20) Cape Manazuru @
Admission:￥300 for adult. Closed on Thursday and year-end holidays
This museum is located on the tip of Manazuru Peninsular.
The view of Mitsuishi Rocks, the extreme tip of the paninsular, from the museum
The museum has some 50,000 specimens of 4,500 species of shellfishes. The collections are based on those of late Mr. ENDO Haruo (1915 – 2006) who was a researcher/collector of shellfish and ran a private museum. Later, all of his collections were donated to Manazuru Town which established the museum here in 2010.
The museum occupies on the second floor.
The entrance of the museum
The entrance corridor. The skeleton of a whale is seen below right.
The first exhibition room is for the shellfishes of this region, Manazuru and Sagami Bay.
A large diorama shows us the niche of many species of shellfishes in a sea shore.
Shells on display
The second room is for the shellfishes of Japan and slit shells
Shells on display in the second room
One of the magnificent collections is a series of slit shells. The specimens of 27 species out of 30 are housed in the museum.
The third room is for the shellfishes of the world.
Shells on display in the third room
Anyway, this museum is full of shells of many kinds.
Postal stamps of the designs of shellfish (left) and crafts made of shells (right) are also exhibited.
Most of the area of Manazuru Peninsular where the museum is located is designated as a prefectural nature park, and some walking trails are provided. The experience on hiking in the park shall be reported in due courses.
End.