Last month, readers of this column found me frolicking in the sawdust and lumberyards of Shin Kiba — meaning "New Wood Place" — which arose on reclaimed land in Tokyo Bay in the 1970s when the city's timber businesses were moved there from their traditional home in nearby Kiba to make way for rapid urbanization.

At the end of that story, I came upon The Wood and Plywood Museum, but with no space left to cover it. So this time,after exiting the Yurakucho subway line's Shin Kiba Station, I head off to see what I saw, as it were.

Obscene heat and humidity make walking far more grueling than it was a month ago. Arriving at the Wood Land Tower, home of the museum, I'm basically barbecued. Fortunately, the lobby is air conditioned, and features a large artificial waterfall and a not insubstantial plywood sailboat. Turns out the boat is a replica of The Mermaid, the 5.8-meter craft in which 23-year-old Kenichi Horie made the world's first solo crossing of the Pacific Ocean in 1962. Even noting its hull of Lauan plywood, 14 sheets strong, the vessel still strikes me as a precarious option for crossing the Pacific, and Horie a hero for his success.