Tokorozawa Aviation Museum
On Sunday I did ticked one of the things off my "random days out" list, cause I'd managed to take care of most other errands and chores after the YYH play on Saturday. The Tokorozawa Aviation Park is about an hour and a half away by train, but fares and entry fees were very affordable (the museum is only 410 yen with a discount ticket you can print from their website), so it seemed like a nice thing to do casually without breaking the bank or planning too much.
Getting off the train at Koukuu-kouen station, there was this huge modern plane just sitting next to the road =O Apparently it's open to the public on only certain days, but not this day. Oh well, I was mostly there to see the old planes.
The park itself is a remnant of the first airport of Japan (ever), and it was used as a base for Kamikaze units during WW2 too. Walking into the park, it was clear where the runway used to be. I hope that tower wasn't there yet, though. Now, apparently it's allowed to fly model planes there, so there were lots of people out playing with small model planes, plane-shaped kites, and even paper planes.
Some people practicing sports too, apparently the park has a 2km jogging course.
The museum itself...
The museum itself mostly had foreign planes, though I'd been hoping to see some more Japanese planes from the war. Not that they weren't interesting though. The design of this North American T-6 Texan is very similar to the plane that the main character in the game I'm translating flies in, so it was great being able to have a close look at its parts, and even inside the cockpit! People must've been wondering what I was doing, staring at it for so long from all angles, taking pictures and notes, lol. Luckily it wasn't too crowded at the museum in the morning, even though I arrived about 30 minutes after opening time.
A lot of the advertised "hands-on" exhibits like a flight simulator and some scientific experiments related to flying that you could play with were all "Out of order" or "being adjusted", so there wasn't much to do other than look at the planes. The place seemed kinda old and shabby overall, so I was done looking around after about an hour and a half, probably shorter if I hadn't paid so much attention to the war planes. The other exhibits were mostly just 'text-on-walls' kinda exhibits, so not that interesting to look at. There wasn't any information on the full history of the place, and the panels that did explain some of it just kinda glossed over WW2. ^^; Most of the focus seemed to be on "the first powered flight ever" using a plane imported from France in 1910, and how the airfield developed in the years immediately after that.
Super old plane =O
Too bad you couldn't really look inside the ones suspended from the ceiling
Pilots' gear from the war =O
After I was done looking around the museum, I walked around the rest of the park too. The Japanese garden was really pretty!
These flowers, too!
From there I walked to Tokorozawa station, where I got on the train again. These manhole covers were cute!
Getting off the train at Koukuu-kouen station, there was this huge modern plane just sitting next to the road =O Apparently it's open to the public on only certain days, but not this day. Oh well, I was mostly there to see the old planes.
The park itself is a remnant of the first airport of Japan (ever), and it was used as a base for Kamikaze units during WW2 too. Walking into the park, it was clear where the runway used to be. I hope that tower wasn't there yet, though. Now, apparently it's allowed to fly model planes there, so there were lots of people out playing with small model planes, plane-shaped kites, and even paper planes.
Some people practicing sports too, apparently the park has a 2km jogging course.
The museum itself...
The museum itself mostly had foreign planes, though I'd been hoping to see some more Japanese planes from the war. Not that they weren't interesting though. The design of this North American T-6 Texan is very similar to the plane that the main character in the game I'm translating flies in, so it was great being able to have a close look at its parts, and even inside the cockpit! People must've been wondering what I was doing, staring at it for so long from all angles, taking pictures and notes, lol. Luckily it wasn't too crowded at the museum in the morning, even though I arrived about 30 minutes after opening time.
A lot of the advertised "hands-on" exhibits like a flight simulator and some scientific experiments related to flying that you could play with were all "Out of order" or "being adjusted", so there wasn't much to do other than look at the planes. The place seemed kinda old and shabby overall, so I was done looking around after about an hour and a half, probably shorter if I hadn't paid so much attention to the war planes. The other exhibits were mostly just 'text-on-walls' kinda exhibits, so not that interesting to look at. There wasn't any information on the full history of the place, and the panels that did explain some of it just kinda glossed over WW2. ^^; Most of the focus seemed to be on "the first powered flight ever" using a plane imported from France in 1910, and how the airfield developed in the years immediately after that.
Super old plane =O
Too bad you couldn't really look inside the ones suspended from the ceiling
Pilots' gear from the war =O
After I was done looking around the museum, I walked around the rest of the park too. The Japanese garden was really pretty!
These flowers, too!
From there I walked to Tokorozawa station, where I got on the train again. These manhole covers were cute!