[🍣 Mizkan Museum, Aichi] Over 2 hours of super satisfaction for 500 yen! Excellent experiential design and ingenuity. Recommended for travelers and children!

[#356, approx. 4,600 characters, approx. 70 photos]
Mizkan Museum (Handa City, Aichi Prefecture). I visited for the first time. Here are my thoughts and review.

▶︎ Conclusion

Highly satisfied with the museum! This is mainly because 1) it is not just an exhibition about Mizkan, but a well-crafted, story-driven structure featuring videos, interactive elements, games, and sound and wind effects, and 2) I was able to enjoy it for a full 2 hours for 500 yen. I developed an attachment to Mizkan! Compared to other factory tours, reservations are easier to get. Whether you live in Aichi or are a traveler, definitely go to the Mizkan Museum! 😊

▶︎ Reason for visiting

To watch a baseball game at Vantelin Dome Nagoya, I planned a 2-day, 1-night trip to Nagoya with my family. At that time, I searched for places we could go as a family using "Aichi / Factory Tour." I found the Mizkan Museum and decided to go (other factory tours were not available for booking).

▶︎ Access

The Mizkan Museum is about a 13-minute walk from Chita-Handa Station. Chita-Handa Station is about 30 minutes from Nagoya Station.

The area around Handa Station was a typical residential neighborhood. Mizkan's headquarters is located in Handa, the place of its founding. The modern and stylish headquarters and museum stood out in the Handa area.

The Mizkan Museum requires advance reservation. Major factory tours fill up as soon as reservation times open. However, I was able to easily book the Mizkan Museum even 3 days in advance.

For example, in Aichi Prefecture, the Aichi Yakult Factory and Black Thunder Wakuwaku Factory were fully booked. Compared to those, is vinegar unpopular because it's considered 'sober'? But in reality, the Mizkan Museum was a very modern and photogenic, wonderful facility ✨

▶︎ What is the Mizkan Museum?

The Mizkan Museum is an experiential museum (opened in 2015) where you can touch, enjoy, and learn about the history of Mizkan's vinegar making and the charm of food culture. It reopened in 2024, and many contents, including digital ones, were added.

It is commonly known as "MIM." The reason it is not "MM" might be influenced by the fact that the font for the "mi" in the "mizkan" logo is different from the rest.

The building has received various awards, including the "Public Building Award - Excellence Award." The website also has a design that shows great effort (and money) was put into it.

▶︎ Museum tour begins!

The museum offers two courses (the full museum course and the mini course). These differ in the number of zones you can see and whether or not there is a guide. The adult prices are 500 yen and 300 yen, respectively. Since there is only a 200-yen difference, the full museum course is recommended!

I chose the full museum course. Below, I will introduce the content along the route.

✔️ Daichi no Kura (Warehouse of the Earth)

The tour starts at "Daichi no Kura" on the second floor. Here, you can see how vinegar was made in the Edo period and how it is brewed today. In the experiential corner, you can enjoy games that teach you about the wisdom and ingenuity of Edo-period craftsmen and Mizkan's dedication to vinegar making.

The one guiding you through this area is actually a robot named "Mimmin". It moves to designated spots and displays its face and explanations on an LCD screen. If the path is blocked, it stops and moves to its position while saying something like, "Please clear the way."

I have been to various corporate museums and factory tours. Among them, this method is a first for me. Often, guides on tours speak quickly, leaving no room for questions. In such cases, even if you use "Mimmin" to streamline labor costs, I felt there is no major difference in visitor satisfaction.

I don't use vinegar in every meal, but I thought, "It's really hard work to make it." Fermenting the raw materials is similar to making beer.

▼ Impressions of a beer factory tour

Inside the museum, high-tech equipment was used throughout. In addition, by making full use of various variations such as exhibits, text, videos, and interactive items, there is a wealth of information!

✔️ Wind Corridor

In the "Wind Corridor," you can learn about the history of Handa through panels. Also, you can see the Handa Canal from this space.

The Handa Canal is one of the three great canals in Japan. The others are the Otaru Canal (Hokkaido) and the Horikawa Canal (Miyazaki Prefecture).

From here, a guide will join you. The guide was happy to take photos for the participants, and their language was polite, kind, and friendly.

The Mizkan Group began in 1804 during the Edo period, when the first Matazaemon Nakano, who ran a sake brewery, succeeded in making sake lees vinegar from sake lees. Now, it has been in business for over 200 years!

Handa seems to have been a good location because sake brewing was thriving and a canal had been developed to transport goods to Edo. While cherishing such history, Mizkan still has its headquarters in Handa.

✔️ Time Warehouse

Here, a benzaisen ship from that time is reproduced. Also, the history of the Mizkan Group is introduced in detail.

The size of the benzaisen ship that transported vinegar from Handa to Edo was about 20m. It weighed about 20 tons and could carry up to 46 tons of cargo (90,000 500ml plastic bottles!). At that time, sushi was a huge hit in Edo. The demand for vinegar used for it skyrocketed. Incidentally, sushi at that time was 2-3 times the size of today's, about the size of a fist.

In 1884, with the enforcement of the Trademark Ordinance, the 4th Matazaemon Nakano was thinking about a logo. Initially, he applied for a mark with "Kan" circled, but another company had already beaten him to it. So, he came up with the Mizkan mark still used today, and it was registered.

The Nakano family also expanded its business into banking. In 1941, based on the "one bank per prefecture" policy, three banks—Nagoya Bank, Ito Bank, and Nakano Bank—merged to become Tokai Bank. Then, in 2002, Sanwa Bank and Tokai Bank merged to create UFJ Bank (now Mitsubishi UFJ Bank).

Mizkan is currently a privately held, family-owned business where the top leadership consists of sisters from the founding family: the Representative and Group CEO is Miwa Nakano (the 8th generation and first female head), and the Deputy CEO is Yuko Nakano (Miwa's younger sister).

When you think of "Mizkan," you think of vinegar. However, in terms of individual product sales, the #1 and #2 spots are held by "Kin no Tsubu" natto. Following that are tsuyu (soup base), Ajipon, and vinegar.

Even when looking at sales by product category, natto is number one. While natto sales are increasing, vinegar sales are declining. It is truly a natto company now.

Furthermore, sales in North America are higher than in Japan and Asia combined. In North America, sales of pasta sauce and vinegar seem to be doing well. I didn't know that a company born in the town of Handa, Aichi Prefecture, had become a global company centered in North America.

The "Toki no Kura" (Warehouse of Time) area had so much information that I couldn't possibly digest it all within the allotted time.

After a bit of free time, we head up to the second floor. On the second floor, you can board a Benzaisen ship. I was so impressed by the unexpected tour structure that allowed us to board the massive ship we had been looking up at from below and thinking, "Wow!"

On the Benzaisen ship, you watch a voyage video showing vinegar being transported from Handa to Edo. During the video, there are actual wind effects, as well as lighting and sound production that match the scenes.

It's not just a simple exhibition; I was surprised by the various ingenious gimmicks. You can enjoy it for over two hours, and there is absolutely no time to be bored. This is a great deal for 500 yen! It really lives up to Mizkan calling itself a "museum". This luxury reminded me of the Asahi Super Dry Museum.

✔️ Water Theater

We watched a video at the "Water Theater." The theme is Mizkan's group vision slogan, "Bringing flavor to life."

It was great that the museum was structured to convey Mizkan's philosophy rather than just introducing its history and products. Mizkan products barely appear in the video; instead, it shows the four seasons of Japan, nature, food (using vinegar), and the smiles of the people living there. It was like an image video inserted into a Makoto Shinkai film, as if revering nature.

With moving visuals and music of the four seasons playing with narration, there wasn't a specific story, but it was a structure that somehow made me want to cry. This is where we said goodbye to our guide.

✔️ Garden of Light

In the final "Garden of Light," you can have a drink or play with the exhibits. You can use the remaining time however you like.

This floor has many exhibits that both adults and children can enjoy. Even for children who might have gotten bored with the previous exhibits, this was a pleasant initiative that lifted their spirits at the end. The overall structure is excellent.

Before I knew it, I had been enjoying the Mizkan Museum for about two and a half hours. Overall, it was a great decision to bring the kids to this corporate museum.

▶︎ Summary

How was it? Despite being easy to book, it was a very high-satisfaction corporate museum. The price is cheap at 500 yen! You can enjoy it for a full two hours! It doesn't just stop at exhibits; through various gimmicks, Mizkan's dedication was structured in a comfortable flow. It is recommended for both those living in Aichi Prefecture and travelers alike 😀

▶︎ Next Preview

Next time, I plan to post about the "Renewal Opening: The Entire Building Showcases the Era of Art through the Collection" exhibition currently being held at the Miyagi Museum of Art.

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