A look at the Shimano Bike Museum with praise for its focus on bicycles over its own corporate history. For anyone in the Kansai area of Japan, perhaps visiting Kyoto or Osaka, this has a prodigious collections of machines and within a well-designed setting. The museum itself is striking, a modern building that’s glass and steel. To see pictures of it online is to imagine it might be Shimano’s head office in a prime location, and that there’s a museum inside. However it is all museum, and the surrounding area more ordinary.
"In Japanese, we call a bicycle “jitensha,” which literally means “wheels rotated by oneself.” This means a bicycle is operated by the rider and that there are as many ways of enjoying cycling as there are riders." This English text is from the welcome message written on the wall at the start of the museum tour. You might learn the word for bicycle here as you enter, by the time you leave the message of many ways to enjoy cycling will come through. The sign is of course in Japanese too and the museum is bilingual. Head upstairs and you enter a large darkened room with a procession of bicycles under spotlights. These cover the chronology of the machine, from rudimentary hobby horses to the arrival of pedals, the chain, tires more evolution.
Then it’s into a bright white room where frosted glass lets in daylight and more spotlights highlight exhibits such as Freddy Maerten’s steel Flandria. You can get close to touch it – not that you would or should – but it’s not behind glass or roped off, just raised on a small stage. You can see the Ishiwata tubing decal and the Shimano Crane rear mech, the beginnings of Shimano in the pro peloton. All the other bikes are similarly accessible. You can see bikes used at Paralympic games and notice the custom modifications up close. A Specialized Stumpjumper, one of the first mountain bikes to go on sale, sits there and you can spot a Campagnolo headset and motorbike brake levers among the components on the “clunker”. As well as history there’s the humdrum. A Crescent bike in the yellow and blue of the Swedish postal service, complete with studded tires to show you can ride on ice, even with a heavy cargo.
Source: Hacker News · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing