The Hokkaido University Museum

The Hokkaido University Museum occupies a long, three-story building constructed of gray stone with a sharp, gabled roof. Built in nineteen twenty-nine as the school of science, it houses millions of specimens collected since the university began as an agricultural college in the nineteenth century. When the campus moved here, researchers arrived with crates of fossils, insects, and dried plants. A skeleton of a large sea cow, now extinct, stands in the lobby as a reminder of those early expeditions.