Of course there is a museum with more than 900 rocks with the “face” of a human being. And of course it’s in Japan.

Japan is a country that seems taken from another dimension, where the craziest and strangest things (for us Westerners) can happen. The only place where we can find beautiful manhole coversmajestic snow sculptures, very strange contestsbizarre television seriesas well as restaurants with robots and a few other wonders that leave us with our mouths open.

Rocks with human faces. Today’s protagonist is another gem that can only be in Japan, since it is the only museum in the world that exhibits more than 1,700 rocks, of which 900 have one characteristic in common: they all have the appearance of a human face, well, or at least a face with eyes and a mouth. It is about from the Chinsekikan museum.

Where. In Chichibutwo hours northwest of Tokyo, we will find a very peculiar and unique place in the world, a museum with an impressive collection of rocks, which were collected for more than 50 years by its founder Shozo Hayama, and where we will find rocks that resemble everything from the face of Jesus to Elvis Presley.

Its origin. The museum, which means ‘The Hall of Curious Rocks‘, is currently managed and curated by Yoshiko Hayama, the wife of the founder who died in 2010, and it is she who maintains the museum as her husband left it, since she wanted to pay tribute to him after dedicating much of her life to collecting ‘jinmenseki’ (rocks with a human face). All stones are like this, they occur as is in nature, and do not have any type of modification.

The names. Mr. Hayama not only collected the rocks, but also named them according to their features, which is why we will find rocks named in honor of Boris Yeltsin and even fictional characters such as Donkey Kong, ET, Nemo, and many more. However, there are still several unnamed rocks, so occasionally Mrs. Hayama comes out to welcome visitors and takes the opportunity to ask opinions about possible names for the rocks that have not been named.

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Image | Chinsekikan Museum