Shikoku Mura

This is an outdoor museum where traditional buildings from around the the island have been relocated with an emphasis on old industries. 

Living quarters of wealthy family

​We spent a fascinating few hours looking at buildings and equipment and videos of old folks talking about the work they used to do, English subtitles often being available.

However when we arrived we found another vine bridge used as an optional entrance for the brave. Couldn’t resist trying it and found it  more difficult than the previous ones. If only we had known this one was here as the drive down to the others had been long and hard.

Demountable building to store sugar cane

The roof of the building in last phot

There was an interesting section on sugar as sugar cane was grown here and the traditional  processes for creating white sugar from the molasses, the end result looked very like icing sugar.

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Then we saw the equipment needed for making soy sauce, a long process but did you know it requires a   mould from 
aspergillus family?
We learned a lot more about soy sauce making later in our trip when we visited a soy sauce factory. Soy sauce ice cream anyone?
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Soy sauce jar

​There was a short piece about paper making using  branches from the mulberry tree which were steamed so as to remove the bark before the process could continue.
This paper was used for traditional Japanese doors.

Steamer for mulberry twigs, fire in the pit and big inverted bucket drops down over wood

What baffles us is how some of these items were discovered. Does someone accidentally keep steamed soya beans sufficiently  near to roasted wheat for a form of sauce oozes out? Does someone cut a branch of mulberry and have an inspired moment and invent paper? Sugar from sugar cane I can understand but some of these other inventions are inspired  we must give all credit to our ancestors the world over.