After a long, busy transition to my new surroundings, I finally have a chance to sit and write! To say my life has undergone some changes would be an understatement. Work has kept me plenty busy, and it’s been difficult to find the time to explore what’s around me. That’s not to say that there’s been no outings in the past four months.

A notable experience from a couple months ago was visiting the ‘New Ginger Museum’ in Tochigi city. As the name implies, the museum is a showcase for all things ginger. Though fully matured ginger is typically white in color, when it is harvested at an earlier stage it is instead pink. Can you guess which variety this museum prominently showcases?

Known as the Iwashita New Ginger Museum, this place is not only for showcasing the ginger itself, but ginger inspired art and oddities. We could see ginger inspired food, photo ops, as well as things that were simply there by virtue of having similarities to pink ginger.

As I mentioned, the museum’s name is the Iwashita New Ginger Museum. Iwashita is the name of the company that manages the harvesting and pickling of the ginger products for sale in the museum, as well as in local markets. Similar to many companies in Japan, Iwashita felt the need to have a mascot, and they found one in the form of a pink deer known as the ‘Iwashika’ (‘shika’ = ‘deer’ in Japanese).

Another ‘punny’ example was the ‘Ginger Shrine’. This joke is a bit more impactful if you mix in a bit of Japanese. See, the Japanese word for shrine is ‘jinja’, so here, you can see a ‘Ginger Jinja’!

While many of the sites were amusing, there were moments where I was reminded that there is a weird side of Japan (as if the above recounting wasn’t weird enough).

After having our fill of the exhibits, we decided to try the café. The eatery offered a variety of dishes and beverages, and what would make each of them more appetizing than infusing all of them with ginger?

I opted for a ginger beer while my fiancée went with a ginger soda float. The float had the frozen dessert part in the shape of a whale shark (a character I think they were doing a collaboration with at the time). We both decided to share a helping of gyoza (pot stickers) and salad. Did I mention everything was loaded with ginger?

The beer wasn’t bad. If I didn’t know there was ginger in it, I’d just think it was an overly spicy beer. The gyoza was alright, dispite the explosion of gingeriness. Towards the end of the meal, we started to realize a problem: in many cases, ginger is used as a pallet clenser while eating other foods. In this case, there was no pallet clenser for the ginger, only more ginger. Even so, it was an enjoyable experience.

I’m not sure if I’ll return anytime soon, though I could possibly come back for some of the café offerings (they seem to swap out menu items occasionally). Considering there’s no charge for admission, if you find yourself in the area it’s certainly worth a look!