#Eda85daysinJapan | Chapter 4 (Hokuriku) | Kanazawa -Ishikawa Prefectural Library & Kanazawa Phonograph Museum

🗓️  16 May – 13 June 2026

📍 Ishikawa Prefectural Library & Kanazawa Phonograph Museum

Two places recommended to me by Peggy and Dave were the Ishikawa Prefectural Library and the Kanazawa Phonograph Museum.

The Ishikawa Prefectural Library opened in July 2022 and it really does feel like a place you can linger. About 1.1 million books, plus events, workshops and digital art. The Great Hall is the part that stays with you — a huge circular reading space with books arranged around 12 themes, so you wander and bump into things instead of just searching. There’s Bookrium, which turns the collection into this kind of digital universe, a corridor-style space called Ring, and the Ishikawa Collection on the prefecture’s nature and culture. There’s a Children’s Area, a Bridge where you can sit and look out over the hall, and around 500 seats in more than 100 kinds of chairs. I kept changing seats just because I could.

It was about a 20-minute walk from my apartment, further away from the town centre, so I got to walk through the local neighbourhood on the way. The facilities felt quite new and really designed for modern needs. There’s an auditorium too.

The Kanazawa Phonograph Museum is much smaller and more specific. It opened in 2001 and is built around the collection of Hiroshi Yokaichiya, who used to run a record shop in Kanazawa. He started picking up old phonographs in the 1970s when they were being thrown away, repaired them, and eventually gathered hundreds of machines and tens of thousands of SP records. The city took over the collection and turned it into a museum.

The first time I went, I didn’t check that it’s closed on Tuesday. When I did get in, one of the main things that stayed with me was learning the origin of HMV — His Master’s Voice. I got to see the original Victor talking machine, the one connected to the image of the puppy Nipper listening to his late master’s voice. I had heard the story somewhere before, but seeing it here felt more meaningful, especially now that I have a puppy of my own.

All the treasures here are properly curated and protected. There are guided tours, and they play historical phonographs three times a day. You can also pick some of your favourite music and listen to it on an LP in the listening corner.

One place feels wide open and modern, the other small and full of old sound. Glad Peggy and Dave pointed me toward both.