Home/Iwate/Kuji/Kuji Amber Museum

Kuji Amber Museum

Little knownBarely documented in English. This is the kind of place the site exists for.

Researched and written by Hinato

Kuji amberCretaceousfossil digmuseumKuji

Photo: Ty19080914 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) · original

Kuji Amber Museum is easy to underestimate from a photo — it's a place that works better in person, at an unhurried pace.

Kuji amber is around 85 million years old, from the Cretaceous, which makes it substantially older than Baltic amber and old enough to contain insects that lived alongside dinosaurs. It has been dug here since at least the Jomon period and Kuji beads have been found in tombs across Japan.

The museum sits in the woods above the town on the site of the workings and covers the geology, the insect inclusions and the history of the trade, with a collection that includes Baltic material for comparison. The part people remember is outside: for ¥1,500 you get an hour with a hammer in a working seam, and what you find you keep. Admission to the museum is ¥500 for adults and ¥200 for schoolchildren.

Good to know

Hours

9:00 AM – 5:00 PM | Last entry 4:30 PM

Closed: Closed Tuesdays from December to February | Closed 31 December – 1 January and on the last day of February

Cost

¥500 adults | ¥200 elementary and junior high school students | Excavation experience ¥1,500 per hour

Best time to visit

Year-round

Time to allow

90 minutes | 2–3 hours with the dig

Access route

Getting there in detail

Okuji-cho 19-156-133, Kuji. By car from JR Kuji Station. Closed Tuesdays from December to February, 31 December – 1 January and on the last day of February. Admission ¥500 for adults and ¥200 for elementary and junior high school students, with group rates of ¥400 and ¥150. Amber excavation experience ¥1,500 for one hour. Groups of 20 or more and school parties should book ahead.

Local tips

**Dig for an hour and keep what you find.** ¥1,500 with tools provided, in a real seam. Most people find something small; nobody is guaranteed anything. **Eighty-five million years old.** Cretaceous, considerably older than Baltic amber. Inclusions here are insects that lived with dinosaurs, which the museum makes a good deal of and is entitled to. **Tuesdays only close in winter.** December to February. The rest of the year it opens daily apart from the New Year and the last day of February. **It is twenty minutes out of town.** In the woods above Kuji on the site of the workings, not in the centre. Car or taxi. **Kuji amber travelled.** Beads from here have been excavated from tombs across Japan, which puts this valley on a trade network from the Jomon period.

View on Google Maps