The Currency Museum in Tokyo

2 posts
Hello! Here's a little rant about the city I live in:

The other day I went to Nihonbashi (about a fifteen minutes' train ride from where I live) and paid a long-overdue visit to the Currency Museum of the Bank of Japan, which was a great place to learn about this country's history of money. The exhibits included wadō kaichin, a variety of Edo period fundō weights made of gold, numerous koban and ōban, silver schuit, and a history of banknotes, along with some world money such as Ancient Greek/Roman coins, 19th century European gold, spade money, Thai porcelain tokens, a Katanga cross, a Rai stone, etc. It hardly took me a couple hours to see all the exhibits -- it's a one-floor museum, after all -- but it was really nice! I don't know if they have an audio guide or such available in English, but if ever you came to Tokyo, I could highly recommend this place. The admission's free, anyway.

I live in the area of Tokyo that they call Shitamachi, and as I studied on historical currencies (well, sort of) I learned and realised that it actually is a pretty nice area for coin enthusiasts. Not far from here is the town of Kameido (which my family often took me to for shopping when I was little), and what I recently learned is that one of the better known type of Kan'ei Tsūhō, the one referred to as haibun-sen from the 文 mintmark on the reverse, was minted there. Additionally, the famous Ginza (where there used to be a silver coin mint in the Edo period) is not far from here, either. And then there's Nihonbashi, which holds the headquarters of the Bank of Japan, and the adjacent Currency Museum. Maybe there are more of such places nearby, but I'm not sure.

Well, the point of this post slipped my mind while typing it out but yeah, the Currency Museum was a nice place, and I wonder if there are such institutions in other cities/countries? I didn't even know my city had one until rather recently...or such museum existed.
Twopence a week, and jam every other day!
Bangkok has a coin museum that is currently under renovation with the main exhibits slated to reopen in 2019. There is also the the BOT museum that you need to request an invitation at least one week in advance.

» Forum policy

Used time zone is UTC+1:00.
Current time is 11:32.