A former bank now serves as a museum. Along the streets from Gofuku-Motomachi to Yanagimachi in Saga stand Western-style buildings put up as banks and merchant houses, and their interiors have been opened as museums and places to eat. Seven of them operate together as the Saga Historical and Folk Museum: the former Koga Bank and the former Sansei Bank, along with residences including the former Koga, Ushijima, Fukuda, Morinaga and Hisatomi houses.

Three of them opened in 1997, the former Sansei Bank and the former Fukuda house followed in 2000, and the former Morinaga and Hisatomi houses were added in April 2016, so the collection has assembled itself over nearly twenty years. Opening hours run from nine until five, with last admission at half past four, and all of them are free to enter. Saga station is about twenty minutes away on foot, Fukuoka is roughly forty minutes by rail, and housing here is inexpensive compared with the cities either side of it.

A bank is built with more height than a house needs. It has to hold a queue of people and a strongroom inside the same structure, so the ceiling goes up in proportion to a fairly modest floor area — and that surplus height is exactly what makes the building useful later, when the bank has gone. Volume is the single hardest thing to add to a building that already exists, and the one most often wanted. Former banks turn into museums and restaurants so readily because they were over-built for their original purpose, and sooner or later somebody else needs exactly that room.