The Post Office Museum

This small museum in the Narai post town occupies a 1979 building styled after classic post-town architecture, with an overhanging upper story, fine wooden lattice windows, and an 1870s-style black postbox outside. The interior exhibition traces the history of Japan's postal service with objects including a postman's uniform from 1871 and a bugle mountain postmen carried to warn off bears. Miniature reproductions of Japanese postboxes across 150 years of design are a compact highlight. A single-story Western-style post office building from 1915 stands a short distance away on the opposite side of the road. The Narai area itself is one of the Nakasendo post towns and worth exploring on foot.