The Unwind Hotel and Bar is perfectly situated in Otaru…walking distance for me to lots of attractions. It also has a free wine hour between 5-6pm each night. Mustn’t have had too many Aussies staying to date 🙂

The Stained Glass Museum was first cab off the rank, housed in what used to be the Takahashi Warehouse, built in 1923 by Naoji Takahashi, an entrepreneur and politician. Its original use was to store soybeans – its wooden framework and stone walls providing good heat insulation. It now houses British stained glass from the 20thC, brought across from Britain after churches were torn down due to the decrease in people’s religious interest. Canterbury Tales, as one example of the glass on display. For those interested, here’s a link to the museum

https://www.nitorihd.co.jp/otaru-art-base/en/stained-glass-museum/

The Nitori Museum of Art, on its ground floor, has a collection of works by Louis Comfort Tiffany, known as an artist and ‘master of light’, designed in the Art Nouveau era.

The fourth floor had a series of Japanese paintings and I loved Tamako Kataoka’s work (she was a ‘Nihonga’ painter using mineral pigments and occasionally ink):

The third floor has Western art and I was taken with Kuniyoshi Utagawa’s woodblock print from the mid 1800’s, ‘Storehouse of Treasured Goods: Scribblings on the Wall’:

The second floor, loved this wooden sculpture by Koun Takamura (1852-1934):

This vase caught my attention in the Art Nouveau/Art Deco section of the Museum: