Hakone Toy Museum!
A surprise trip to famed toy-collector Teruhisa Kitahara’s tin toy museum in scenic, mountainous Hakone Japan yielded this handful of photos.
Unlike Kitahara’s tin toy museum near Yokohama, which focuses on tin robots and spaceships, the Hakone annex is largely filled with tin cars and airplanes. But that being said, no hall of Japanese toys would be complete without a few selected robots and monsters, and the Hakone Toy Museum delivers.
Check out those Bullmark tin kaiju! And the life-sized (well, human-sized) Tetsujin 28 and
Astroboy statues! The anime-style renditions of long-gone American movie stars! And who could forget that krazy-looking Kute Kitty?
It’s a lot of fun. Unless you’re a tin toy maniac, though, I’m not sure if the museum is really worth making a special trip from Tokyo. (It’s a good two hours away.) But it sure is a nice respite between taking dips in Hakone’s famed hot springs!
