2026 A Full Day at the Odawara Literature Museum and Hakushu Children's Song Museum

This course lets you spend a day of castles and literature in a quiet corner of the old castle town of Odawara. In the morning, stroll through Odawara Castle Ruins Park (小田原城址公園), taking in the atmosphere of the castle town while looking up at the castle keep. From there, walk to Saikachi-koji (西海子小路), a street that still retains traces of its former samurai residences. At the end of a road once home to many writers stands the afternoon's highlight, the Odawara Literature Museum (小田原文学館). Housed in a Western-style building originally built as the villa of Count Tanaka Mitsuaki, a former Minister of the Imperial Household, it displays materials on writers connected to Odawara, and the Hakushu Children's Song Museum (白秋童謡館) on the same grounds lets you experience the world of nursery rhymes by Kitahara Hakushu. Admission is 250 yen for adults, 100 yen for elementary and junior high school students, and free for preschoolers (a combined ticket for both museums). Opening hours are 10:00-17:00 from March to October and 10:00-16:30 from November to February (last admission 30 minutes before closing), and the museums are closed on Mondays (the following weekday if Monday is a holiday) and during the New Year holidays (December 28-January 3). If you walk with a child who knows Yurikago no Uta (Cradle Song), the nursery rhymes will feel wonderfully close to home.