Yes, there really is a Ninja Museum, located in Iga, Mie Prefecture, Japan – right in the middle of the ninjas’ ancient stomping grounds. I haven’t been there, of course, but it’s not terribly difficult to predict what kind of artefacts you’d get to see there – hardly any at all, of course. They’re there, but they wouldn’t be authentic ninja artifacts if you could actually see them. ._.
And for a long time, it wouldn’t really have mattered – after all, a museum as perfectly camouflaged as this one is bound to be could hardly have attracted a large audience, before Wikipedia started brazenly giving away its exact location. I’m sure that many Wikipedia editors must have paid a high price for that sort of indiscretion, but as Professor Ninjaiakis points out, there are just too many of them, and new ones are being recruited all the time. And the fact that the museum now has actual visitors must have done wonder for sales at the museum shop…as long as only ninja could locate the shop, the merchandise probably disappeared at a brisk rate without resulting in any intake of money.
Speaking of Professor Ninjaiakis, of course I’ve got no idea who really curates the ninja museum, but the assumption that the person in question is another one of Professor Dr.’s fellow professors with a tightly delineated field of study and a name to match doesn’t seem too farfetched…by my standards. >_>
And it is kind of a logical place for Mopey to begin her investigation, since it is what the Professor himself usually did…and would probably have done in this case, if he had been looking for himself.
What Professor Ninjaiakis says about ninja history is mostly true, save for the idea that shuriken actually served as Christmas tree decoration and only became misunderstood as a weapon because of the gusto with which ninja threw that stuff out after the season. That’s only a personal pet-theory of mine, and I’ll admit straight away that it has never gained all that much currency with serious scholars of the field.
More on Thurs…uh, Monday!