Visit the Atsugi City Museum to see the Triceratops!

The Atsugi City Museum is a new museum that was opened with the goal of enabling Atsugi citizens and visitors from outside the prefecture learn more about the history, culture, and nature of “Atsugi,” and to learn about this land more deeply.

The museum contains many very valuable and interesting works. First and foremost is the fossil of a Triceratops that lived in the late Cretaceous period. Here, the Triceratops is displayed so close that you can almost feel its breath. Also, the head is in almost perfect condition!

Dinosaurs are booming now, but it is surprisingly not known that such a very valuable item is exhibited in a part of the Kanto region. Since it is on permanent display, anyone can see it at anytime and have the experience of going back to the Cretaceous period.

In addition, the Atsugi City Museum owns several signature items, including the “earthenware with a crocodile excavated from the Hayashi Oji Ruins” and the “shallow bowl excavated from the Onna Okihara Ruins.” A human face is sculpted into the “pottery with crocodile with a hole excavated from the Hayashi Oji Ruins.” Such earthenware decorations sometimes depict the human body, but it is rare to find works as charming as these.

This kind of earthenware decoration can be seen as representing a frog, but the decoration on this piece can also be seen as a cute human face. Its face is calm and smiling, and it seems to welcome us with its hands raised.

In addition to these valuable excavated items, the Atsugi City Museum also possesses valuable photographs from the end of the Edo period to the beginning of the Meiji period, taken by Felice Beato. One piece in particular that should be seen is the water purification canal and the people who were already in Atsugi at that time. You can see how clean life was in those days. In addition, a part of the purification channel is reproduced and exhibited at the museum.

It’s great to get to know our town, and it’s also great to get to know a city you’ve never visited before! It is a museum that I would like to visit at least once, if not more often.