Almost in the Orient

As the Royal Art and History Museum opened a new Japanese Art Museum this week, I took the opportunity to take a look at it and at the same time revisit the Japanese Tower (from the outside, at least) and the Chinese Pavilion, which are remnants of previous international exhibitions.
The whole complex has now been designated the "Museums of the Far East".

One of the local free newspapers announced that in the opening week, as well as activities like origami and flower-arranging, there would be free demonstrations of "martial arts like kendo and ikebana"! (I wonder if you can get a black belt in ikebana...)

I found the new museum, housed in a former stable/garage behind the Chinese pavilion, a little disappointing because it is tiny: in addition to some netsuke, inro and sword guards they are displaying no more than about a dozen of the more than 7000 Japanese prints the museum claims to have collected, and I'm sure the armour on display was formerly to be seen in the Japanese Tower. But, I did enjoy those prints that were on show, and also re-acquainting myself with the Chinese pavilion, which I'm ashamed to say I hadn't visited since Europalia Japan, when the Japanese Tower next door was first opened to the public - and that was in 1989!