The hardest thing about living here is deciding which of the 15 nearby museums we should visit next. To kick off our exhibit tour, we went to the Silk Museum. There, we learned how silk is produced, how it is used to make cloth, and how significant it is to many cultures. One of the highlights (in a weird, creepy way) was seeing the worms form their cocoons, which in turn were unwound for the silk thread. We elected to watch the only English video they had available: a documentary on Bashofu, a traditional Okinawan fabric made from banana trees. It is a painstaking, arduous, time-consuming, and fascinating process. Depicted in our picture album are looms, silk kimono, other crafts you can make with silk cocoons, and a representation of how many cocoons are needed to make certain articles of clothing. (Click on the photo to the left to see them all.)

Tags: Japan