The place to which we were taken next was a museum, the theme of which was the history of Karafuto (Sakhalin in Russian). It was the tourist attraction which I had been eager to visit first of all. I'll write about the museum in this entry.
Generally, I was disappointed to see inside and outside of the museum. I wondered if the museums in communist countries were always like this. There were various items displayed indeed, but with only few Russian descriptions and without English ones. I was not able to absorb information there, and I asked the tour guide some questions, but he didn't give me proper answers. He didn't have enough vocabulary of technical fields such as natural science, rock science, archaeology, biology, and so on. I could only imagine what the articles on display meant.
One more surprising fact! I didn't find the description about the Japanese-Russo War (1904-05) and their invasion into Japan after World War II in the museum, though I managed to presume it by pictures or other items. A Japanese map described in Japanese showed southern Karafuto as of August 15th 1945, which was the date of Japan accepting the Potsdam Declaration, and a milestone which used to be placed on the border between the USSR and Japan, namely on the latitude of 50 degrees, were exhibited in a low-profile corner.
Several folk crafts of Ainu were exhibited. Those were seen also in museums in Hokkaido and so they didn't feel new to me. As I can make out the Cyrillic alphabet, I searched "Мамия" (Mamiya in English). It might be written somewhere, but I was not able to find it. A Japanese explorer, Rinzo Mamiya found the strait between Karafuto and the Eurasian Continent, which was named the "Strait of Mamiya". Karafuto seemed to me a less-developed area, at least academically
(Vocabulary)
北緯５０度以南の樺太は日本領、したがってこのブログでは日本名を使う
Karafuto (樺太) Sakhalin サハリン
Toyohara (豊原) Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk ユジノサハリンスク
Oodomari(大泊) Korsakov コルサコフ
Cyrillic alphabet キリル文字 (スラブ語民族の文字)
Eurasian Continent ユーラシア大陸
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