Japan Through the Eyes of a ChildElementary school-aged children, along with their families and classmates, can step into Japanese culture and experience it first-hand in this exhibition designed especially for them. Four Japanese neighborhoods transport you from Florida to far-off Japan. The exhibition was developed by the National Children's Museum in Washington, D.C. and is funded by a grant from the Kohnken Family Foundation.
Japanese House
Street of Shops Train Station Japan's public transportation system is one of the best in the world and a great way to see the country. In "Japan Through the Eyes of a Child," kids walk onto a train platform and board the famed Shinkansen Bullet Train. Once inside, they sit in seats from a real Bullet Train and see what Japan's fastest mode of transportation is like.
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In Japan, kids take off their shoes at school as they do at home and keep their classroom neat and tidy by cleaning it themselves. In "Japan Through the Eyes of a Child," American kids see what a classroom in Japan is like. They don't have to take off their shoes, but they can sit at real desks and discover for themselves what their Japanese counterparts are learning. The black bag hanging from the side of the desk? It's a randoseru, the type of book-bag all elementary school children use. Also here is a giant soroban (abacus) to be used as an aid to teach this ancient calculating device that is still very much in use in Japan today. Kids learn their ABCs in a classroom like this, but also their toyo kanji that make up the Japanese writing system, all 1,800 of them, according to a chart on the wall. 
Many activities of daily life in the Japanese home take place while Japanese kids are sitting or reclining on tatami-covered floors. In "Japan Through the Eyes of a Child," young visitors to The Morikami enter a Japanese house and see for themselves how their counterparts across the Pacific live at home. After passing through the front door of the house at the end of the shopping street, they take off their shoes in the entry vestibule, or genkan, just as Japanese kids are expected to do. The "house" is represented by a suite of three rooms, including a sitting room with tatami mats, a kitchen, and, yes, a room for a bath and toilet! Kids are free to explore these rooms, to sit on the tatami floor and view the garden outside, wonder why the bath tub is so deep, yet so short, and puzzle over the many buttons and dials on the space-age toilet.
In Japan, just walking along the street is an education in itself, with store windows showing off wares both familiar and unfamiliar. In "Japan Through the Eyes of a Child," youngsters have much the same experience as they visit the exhibit's most ambitious offering, replicating a neighborhood shopping street. Japan is known for its electronic goods, and here is an electronics store stocked with household appliances, as well as favorite entertainment items. Where the electronics store has a façade of gleaming white tile, next door a kimono shop features wood construction and traditional architectural flourishes. In a show window beside a sliding door partially concealed by a noren (traditional privacy curtain) are garments that youngsters might wear for Japan's unique holidays, such as Children's Day. Other stores include a shop selling box lunches, and one featuring folk toys from every part of the country. The shopping street itself incorporates Japanese public telephones, a Japanese mailbox and a Japanese vending machine - items familiar yet unfamiliar.
