I trekked out to the Shigureden museum in Arashiyama, Japan — within Koyoto — and close to the corporate home of Nintendo. Here, the president of Nintendo, Hiroshi Yamauchi has created an interactive museum which at the time used the Nintendo DS to interact with live installations. The entire building and all of the interactive installations are based on a Japanese anthology of poems.
We were fortunate enough to have an attendant present that spoke English. This was not normally the case, so if you are considering going, just assume you will be “on your own”, as English-speaking translators are not normally on hand.
When you walk in (after removing your shoes, of course) there are huge LCD panels on the floor. As you navigate the floorscape with your DS in hand, the Wifi tracks your position over an interactive map of Kyoto. Your DS is represented by a virtual bird which you can see in the video. As you walk around, the bird will circle or migrate towards focal points of Kyoto. When we came across Nintendo HQ on the map, Mario popped out with the iconic “coin” sound. You’re also doing this at the same time with other people, which is really cool because it becomes this social experimentation in traversing this interactive field, your DS serving as a “GPS”/Navi/Pokedex:
There’s a lot of interactive content. Unfortunately for me, it was all in Japanese. But it was pretty bugged out. The building had some dope architecture.
It was also an interesting trek/walk to get to. Kyoto is definitely worth checking out, especially if you want to see Japan beyond the bright lights of Tokyo.
Peep the video. Here’s the website with the sick rock garden jawn:
