In my early years in Japan I visited a few homes of Japanese people and was quite astounded by the amount of clutter in their homes. There were boxes and boxes of things, books and magazines piled up high all over the place and very little in the way of open spaces. I don’t know if that’s true for many or just the consequence of living in much smaller places than in the western world. However, there are various museums and places in Japan which almost celebrate the idea of chaotic clutter, and this one a short distance from Tokyo exemplifies that.

Back in October of last year I had booked two days off work to attend the Toray Pan Pacific Open tennis tournament in Tokyo. However, I wasn’t too excited by the first day of play so decided to skip it and do something else. Subsequently, I ended up travelling into deepest Saitama to check out a rather quirky sight I’d seen in a Japanese magazine earlier last year.

It’s located about 10 minutes on foot north-west of Ogose station on the Hachiko Line and the first thing you see as you walk down the road towards it are the colourful post boxes.

The large number of them placed here used to be located along the same prefectural route but closer to the Ogose Plum Grove a further 2.3 kilometres down the road. As for the present location, that was once the site of Musashi ward Ogose Post Office and the Ogose Sake Brewery until it went out of business in 2011. It is now known as Kannabe Construction Collection Saitama.

It would be impossible to reveal every item that lies among the clutter on the premises of this company but just know that it is rather eclectic mix of randomness where playground equipment and machinery is surrounded by manner of statues whether they be Buzz Lightyear, snails, robots, Santa, Spider-man or elephants!

A short distance beyond that is a giant seated pink rabbit with the path behind leading to some derelict buildings. Pink is the favourite colour of Kannabe’s President Tomoyuki Kannabe who has been assembling this collection for about 40 years.

The only time anyone really comes to this quiet town in Saitama Prefecture is for the plum festival in February and March each year or the Spring fireworks festival but Kannabe has been trying to create a new tourist attraction for revitalising Ogose. I’m not sure if it was just the day I visited but it did appear like it was basically just a deserted building site.

There is a lot of retro Japanese signage on show for all manner of companies.

There wasn’t too much of interest in this part of the “collection” with the main highlight for me being the sight of a a life-size spider-man clinging to the top of some kind of telegraph pole.

Characters in strange places is very much the norm on this site with Japanese robots and monsters strategically placed on top of random objects, and if you walk right down to the back there are actually some real goats.

Poking my head through the window of a shed took me back in time to the days when all-male working places might have typically blokey calendar and poster displays featuring beautiful young ladies not wearing many clothes!

One of the less explicit views! 

There are a few more things to see over the road including pink torii gates, giant frog statues and flower pots chaotically mixed in with stone lanterns and animals as well as a manekin pis statue! For many people passing by this outdoor museum it’s nothing more than a junk yard but one person’s junk is another’s treasure so there probably is something of interest to all those who do stop by to investigate what’s on show.

• Kannabe Construction Collection is located at 863 Ogose, Iruma, Saitama-ken.

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