Hamamatsu Musical Instrument Museum

The Hamamatsu Musical Instrument Museum is Japan’s one and only public musical instrument museum. Hamamatsu is a city where big music companies such as Yamaha and Kawai produce musical instruments. The city itself is striving to be the city of music and this museum is certainly testament to their efforts in working towards this.

This museum has more than 1000 instruments from all around the world, categorized and displayed according to their geographic origin. You will get to see instruments from different parts of the world in sections representing Asia, Africa, America, Oceania, Europe and Japan. These include the piano, angklung, drum, violin, thumb piano and so on... the list goes on and on!

There are headphones next to most of the instruments where you will be able to listen to the sounds of the instrument. You will be able to experience the type of sound a certain instrument produce even if seeing it for the first time. This is one of those museums that people all of ages can enjoy and will be heaven on earth for people that love learning about musical instruments. You can easily spend a few hours in this place just going through and listening to each instrument one by one.

As you go through the different sections, you will experience the different approach people around the world have towards music and how their craft of musical instruments reflects that. The instruments vary from basic constructions to very complicated ones. Several times a day, the museum staff will also do live performances on some instruments, explaining more about each instrument in the process. In another museum section, you can even try out and experience some of the instruments for yourself. You should definitely give this museum a try if you happen to be in Hamamatsu city or are a music lover.

This museum is just a short 10 minutes away from Hamamatsu Station and costs just ¥400 to enter (as of September 2014).