Japan Guide
Northern Honshū
Denshōkan
TheDenshōkan occupies a more attractive red-brick building. This museum of Satake-clan treasures also doubles as a training school for kaba-zaiku, the local craft in which boxes, tables and tea caddies are coated with a thin veneer of cherry bark. Developed in the late eighteenth century to supplement the income of impoverished samurai, kaba-zaiku is now Kakunodate's trademark souvenir. If you prefer your bark still on the trees, turn right outside the Denshōkan, where there's a two-kilometre tunnel of cherry trees along the Hinokinai-gawa embankment. Opening time: Daily 9am–4.30/5pmPrice: ¥300, or ¥510 with the Hirafuku Memorial Art Museum