Kakamigahara Aerospace Museum

Rather than sit in front of the TV all day while keeping an eye on Rikuto, I decided to take him to the Kakamigahara Aerospace museum instead.

Kakamigahara is home to the Gifu Self-Defense Force Air Base and the Kawasaki Aerospace Division, so perhaps to make up for the noise of fighter jets flying overhead, the public are treated to a museum dedicated to flying machines.

The museum was better than I expected. While most of the focus is on Japanese planes, designers from Kakamigahara, and products of Kawasaki, there are also displays about man’s early attempts at flying, rockets, helicopters, more rockets, space stations and Jules Verne stories. Real planes fill the area outside the museum as well as inside the main hall, and you can get on board and sit in the cockpits of some of them, too.

Rikuto enjoyed watching a remote controlled helicopter fly around inside a large plastic dome, the walls of the dome preventing Ricky from touching the whirring propeller blades. He also liked playing with the computers and clicking the mouse buttons, somehow navigating through a database of rocket engines.

Best of all, though, was crawling around among the planes and helicopters in a hall which we pretty much had to ourselves. If you’re in Nagoya or Gifu and have kids with you, I can recommend a couple of hours at the Kakamigahara Aerospace museum.

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