I have a special attachment to the cab of the Tamaden,” he says. Originally, it was a soba (buckwheat noodle) shop. He trained at a buckwheat noodle shop in Sangenjaya and opened his own buckwheat noodle store, “Daisho-an,” in 1970. As business settled down, he began to display items he had collected until then in the store. One day, I was asked by one of the customers to buy something from the Tokyu Electric Railway. One day, a man from Tokyu Corporation came in. He said, ‘I’ll keep you in mind if I come across something you might want. Then he came again and said, ‘Oh, I see you still have them on display. I see you still have it on display. I’ll give you just the driver’s cab of the train that ran until 1999, when it was no longer needed and was going to be dismantled. That made me happy.
The cap once worn by Tokyu Corporation employees has become Mr. Otsuka’s trademark and is still in use today.
The person who said he would give away the cab of the Tama-Den is the one who said it, but the person who received it is also amazing. Since then, he has continued his business as a buckwheat noodle shop with a Tama-den driver’s cab, and in 2011, he decided to quit his business and turn his store into a history museum after he became ill. He said, “I did the buckwheat noodle shop for a total of 42 years, and although I had some hardships, I worked very hard. I thought it would be a good idea to do what I really wanted to do as my second life. I thought that if I displayed the things I had collected and loved and talked with people who came to the museum, I wouldn’t lose my mind.
Mr. Otsuka is a hardcore Yujiro Ishihara fan.
He says with deep emotion, “I used to admire him.
When the history museum was established, many people came. Newspapers and railroad fans posted pictures of the museum on the Internet. Then we were inundated with inquiries asking when we could open the museum. Soon after we opened the museum, we received an offer from Tokyu Corporation. Tokyu Corporation offered to do a stamp rally that would include the museum. “I started this project as a second life, but it would have been lonely if no one had approached me. That’s why it was a good start for me.”
A handmade scrapbook filled with Tamadenmaterials
and photos.The only handmade scrapbook in the
world, filled with Tamadendocuments and photos.
It was lost once, but it was later returned. It seems
that he knew where he had to go.