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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.

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The movie-set atmosphere of Museum Meiji-Mura is accented by its eclectic mix of 67 buildings that were reprieved from razing as postwar Japan was being rebuilt. You can stroll from the Imperial Hotel over an iron-lattice bridge and through the former gate of Kanazawa Prison to the cathedral of St. Francis Xavier, where couples can still get married. Every building, from old post offices to police posts, butcher shops to banks, is fronted with an English-language plaque explaining its history. Within, dioramas depict life in the Meiji era (1867-1912). Many displays are interactive: a Kabuki troupe performs in the Kureha-za Theater, while an antique Kyoto streetcar runs to sake tastings at the city's former Nakai Brewery.

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.

• Mike Meyer
• Japan's Museum Meiji-Mura is part theme park, part living history