Shiga Prefectural Lake Biwa Museum

Upon entering, you'll first be invited to take the escalator to the second floor. The permanent exhibits are divided into three rooms: Room A, "The 4 Million Years of the Lake and Us - The Nature and Development of Lake Biwa," Room B, "The 20,000 Years of the Lake and Us - The History of Nature and Life," and Room C, "The Lake Today and Us - The Connection between Life and Nature." After following the route, you'll arrive at the first floor's aquarium exhibit. Titled "The Lake Today and Us - Living with Water Creatures," it features freshwater fish that live in Lake Biwa, displayed in a large freshwater tunnel tank that reproduces the underwater environment around Chikubu Island. You can see endemic species such as the Biwako giant catfish and Biwa trout up close. With an exhibit area of approximately 2,000 square meters, it is the largest freshwater biology exhibit in Japan. There are also exhibits of live footage from Lake Baikal near the Baikal Museum, with which it has an agreement, as well as Baikal seals and the Acanthogammarus victorii, the world's first successful breeding of a Baikal yoke shrimp in captivity. In the micro-aquarium, plankton collected from Lake Biwa is displayed daily, so you may be lucky enough to see rare plankton.

At the Discovery Room, you can operate a large model of a crayfish and move its legs and arms, feeling as if you've become a crayfish yourself. You can also hear various sounds produced by animals and enjoy exhibits where you can use all five senses by actually touching things. Children in third grade or below must be accompanied by a guardian. The entrance is limited to 16:30 and there is a limit on the number of people, so you may not be able to enter immediately. You can borrow handmade exhibits called "Discovery BOX" from staff at the counter. What's inside the BOX is a surprise that you'll find out after receiving it!

Not just for kids, there are also spaces prepared for adults to enjoy. It's called "Adult Discovery," the first space in Japan for adult learning and discovery, established in 2018. You can pick up and observe various specimens such as stuffed animals, plants, and minerals under a microscope, and even observe things that you can't touch in 360 degrees. There are also videos showing how stuffed animals are made, quizzes to guess the names of species, and a question corner, but you can also look up information in the books provided. You can even read old documents. The last admission time is 4:30 pm.

In the outdoor exhibition, although it's an artificially created space, the natural surroundings of old Lake Biwa are reproduced. Here, you can participate in nature observation activities, and in the life experiment workshop, you can create rice paddies and fields to cultivate traditional crops that supported the region's lifestyle and culture. Additionally, a waterway and experimental pond have been created to replicate the river from upstream to downstream, where observation activities are held for the organisms that naturally gather there. It's a great opportunity to experience traditional nature that's become difficult to find in urban areas.

After visiting the indoor exhibit room, why not take a walk on the canopy trail? There is an observation deck where you can overlook Lake Biwa and enjoy the vast scenery while feeling the lake breeze, as well as observe the flora and fauna of the forest up close. Walking the canopy trail allows you to tour the outdoor exhibits of the forest. The outdoor exhibits include the "Primeval Forest," which reproduces the deciduous coniferous forest that spread around the wetlands around Lake Biwa about 1.8 to 2 million years ago, the "Jomon-Yayoi Forest," which reproduces the evergreen broad-leaved forest that spread around the hills around Lake Biwa when agriculture began 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, the "Tabu Forest" that remains in the Hikone Castle and Takeshima areas of the Lake Biwa region, the "Lake Shore Forest" where samples of various species such as willows and Japanese alder that grow on the shores of Lake Biwa are planted as a demonstration forest, and the "Deciduous Forest" where a variety of deciduous trees are planted, centered around trees that have a deep connection with human life.