House of Aizumi History Museum, indigo

Great museum. This is the birth place of jeans in Japan. There are many buildings/sections to go through. At the entrance, you pay the museum fee and if you'd like you can chose to dye your own products from a selection of cloth or clothing to dye: smaller items such as a hander-kerchief are about 500 yen and T-shirts can go up to 5,000yen. Next to the entrance is a small store with plenty of hand dyed items. Once passed the shop, there is historical museum with beautiful must- see pieces (two floors). Passed the museum, there is an exit to the traditional buildings. Here there is a courtyard, it is magnificent as they have kept all the historical buildings where they used to store the indigo, processed, and dyed. Each building has an explanation and one in particular has many dioramas explaining thoroughly how indigo was grown and used to dye including the original artifacts used! There is even an old guest house intact, a great experience to see what a traditional home looked like. Then there is the dye area, staff is friendly and help you through each step to dying your fabric. Overall a very enjoyable experience and would love to come back. There is no English available and most of the staff do not speak English so you may want to bring a translator or have google translate ready to fully enjoy the experience!

Great museum and a chance to make your own indigo item. The staff doesn't speak much English.

Nice experience workshop

Small interesting working museum but not very friendly and very few English skills.

Getting to this place from Tokushima Station is hard if you do not speak Japanese. The photo I uploaded in handwriting is in Japanese asking for guidance to Ai Zumi after getting off the bus! Also if you don’t use the rubber bands you will have a full coloured beautiful indigo blue shirt which is what I did!