Osaka Museum of Natural History

This guide to the Osaka Museum of Natural History begins on April 8, 1990, when workers at a port south of the city found an enormous fin whale washed ashore, one of the largest animals ever stranded on a Japanese coast. It follows the museum's seven-year effort to reassemble its skeleton and the public naming that gave it the name Nagasuke, plus the two more whales that later joined it at the entrance. Look up as you walk in, three skeletons now hang above the doorway.