Manga art museum

All the street furniture in our closest little town, Sakura-Shinmachi, seem to be is covered in cute little cartoon characters.  They also feature in shops, as stickers and life-size cardboard cut outs - the fish shop has a little cat licking his chops, for example.  The most repeated cartoon is a little girl with dark curls who appears almost on every available surface.  At first, I thought this was a whimsical feature of the neighbourhood - like the playing of 'here comes the bride' repeatedly on the street tannoy system.  Today however I discovered that these characters are the work of Hasegawa Machiko and the area houses a museum of her work.

Machiko was the first female Manga artist and creator of the comic strip Sazae-san - about a young mother and her family, which was hugely popular throughout Japan between 1947 and the mid 70's, and later turned into a cartoon animation.  These characters are those depicted everywhere in our town.  The series was comparable in popularity to the 'Peanuts' strip in the US and the museum, though small, is frequented by a large number of fans.