Kurashiki

Kurashiki is an historic town to the west of Okayama[?], in Okayama prefecture in Japan. It sits on the Takahashi River[?], on the coast of the Inland Sea[?].

Kurashiki is famous within Japan for a number of reasons:

• Kurashiki is the home to Japan's first Western art museum, the Ohara Museum of Art. Established in 1930 by Magosaburu Ohara[?], it contains masterpieces by El Greco, Monet, Matisse, Gaugin[?], and Renoir. The collection also has fine examples of Asian and contemporary art. The museum itself is housed in a neo-Classical building;

• Kurashiki University of Science and the Arts;

• the ancient merchant quarter, called the Bikan historical area. This area of the city is surrounded by almost unique examples of 17th century wooden warehouses painted white with traditional black tiles, and sits on a canal framed with weeping willows and filled with koi. The area is extraordinarily picturesque, and is a popular tourist destination. The city's town hall is located in Kurashiki Kan, an impressive European style building constructed in 1917.

A Tivoli theme park was built in 1998, based on the theme park of the same name in Copenhagen, and is popular with local Japanese.

External links

• Kurashiki's official homepage (http://www.city.kurashiki.okayama.jp/index_e.html)
• Ohara Museum of Art website (http://iwe.kusa.ac.jp/OHARA/om_op.html)
• Kurashiki University of Science and the Arts website (http://www.kusa.ac.jp/)