Bound for Glory

The sounds of a steam whistle and a puffing train can evoke another era. At Museum Meiji-Mura, tel: (81-568) 670 314, they take you to one. Set outside Inayuma, near Nagoya in central Japan, the open-air museum park comprises a collection of splendid, century-old buildings rescued from demolition, linked by historic train and trolley cars.

"We are arriving in Tokyo station!" announced the conductor of an 1874 Sharp, Stewart & Co. locomotive chugging through the museum grounds. For a moment, it was easy to believe him—not least because we were staring at a onetime icon of the Japanese capital, Frank Lloyd Wright's Imperial Hotel. Or its lobby, at any rate. Built in 1923 near Tokyo's palace, the hotel was torn down in 1965—but not before preservationists managed to dismantle and move a portion to the museum. Visitors can enter the turf stone and brick remains, restored to include a coffee shop, replete with original Wright-designed furnishings. Guests often queue up to slip into rented period costumes for photographs beside the fountain out front.

Style Watch: Rattan Revolution Diversions: All Talk Food: Season to Taste Outdoors: Comfy Camping

Museum Meiji-Mura makes for both a relaxing day away from Nagoya's industrial homogeneity and a history lesson for other Asian cities repainting their faces for the world. The park is the brainchild of Yoshiro Taniguchi and Moto-o Tsuchikawa, a Tokyoite who lamented the relentless modernization of his native city as it prepared to host the 1964 Olympics. Here's hoping a baron in Beijing feels the same about the Chinese capital's fast-disappearing architectural gems.