Kawaguchi Lakeside museum of automobiles and aviation

The Kawaguchi Lakeside museum is located just on the foots of mount Fuji, and despite it's relative lack of fame for tourists, possess one of the largest stores of vintage automobiles and a myriad of restored wartime aircraft within it's halls.

Only opening the massive doors of it's aviation exhibition for a few days in august every year, the Kawaguchi lakeside museum allows visitors to enamor themselves in the exquisite oil-ridden glamor of restored samurai of the sky.

For example, this restored piece of legacy equipment is the First-production model of the Ki-27 fighter "Hayabusa" from the Nakajima aircraft company. This respectable workhorse served all-through out China and the beginning days of the pacific for the Imperial Japanese army from 1937. Only the Yasukuni shrine or the Chiran peace museum offers alternative pieces, and Kawaguchi has her closest to her prime.

And that's only scratching the surface of what this place offers.

IJN carrier reconnaisance craft C6N1 "Saiun"

This airframe is the C6N1 "Saiun". It's the only airframe of it's kind that exists right now.

Introduced late in the war at mid 1944, her mission was to be the IJN's eye for US fleet movments in the overwhealmingly hostile air. She was capable of reaching a max speed of 650 km/h with nominal conditions and 610km/h even with inferior Japanese oil and maintenance. For reference, the F6F "Hell-cat" she shared the skies with in 1944 had a top speed of 599km/h even in their fastest variants. Until the wide spread arrival of the P-51 "Mustang" to the pacific theatre in 1945, the "Saiun" was generally able to outrun

The speed of this craft was made possible by the magnum opus of the Nakajima aircraft company, the "NK9 'Homare'". It was the only Japanese engine capable of exceeding 2000HP at the time. The engine found majority use in late war Japanese aircraft despite the numerous and abysmal reliability issues the engine had.

The cockpit has long been degraded, the delicate machinery has yet to been refurbished as of my visit. The Kawaguchi lakeside museum is the only displayer that allows visitors to get so close to this priceless artifact.

Access

As previously mentioned, the collection is only public during auguest. The author suggests extra caution in planning a trip to this location.