Last weekend my wife and I took an overnight trip to Hakone, which is a small hot spring resort town near Mt. Fuji and west of Tokyo. There are many small museums in the town including the Hakone Glass Forest.

The reason I give this museum only two stars is that although their are some nice pieces of Venetian Glass in the museum most of the area is taken up with shops. It is disturbing when the museum shop is as big as the museum itself. The museum cost JPY 1,300 to enter or roughly USD 12.00. The museum is not at all close to the train station so if you take a taxi that will be another JPY 2,000 one way or USD 18.50 (taxis are not cheap in Japan). Given these high prices if you ever go to Hakone to visit a real Japanese hot spring you might want to skip this museum.

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Set in a mysterious and exotic world which still casts a potent spell today, the story begins in the years before World War II, when a Japanese child is torn from her penniless family to work as a servant in a geisha house. Despite a treacherous rival who nearly breaks her spirit, the girl blossoms into the legendary geisha Sayuri (Ziyi Zhang). Beautiful and accomplished, Sayuri captivates the most powerful men of her day, but is haunted by her secret love for the one man (Ken Watanabe) who is out of her reach.

Based on the internationally acclaimed novel by Arthur Golden.

Cast:-
Ziyi Zhang, Ken Watanabe, Michelle Yeoh, Koji Yakusho, Youki Kudoh, Gong Li, Suzuka Ohgo

Director:-
Rob Marshall