The pagoda-roofed Sakhalin Regional Museum has a 21st-century exhibit exploring the Japanese/Soviet overlap of the city’s history, typified by the building itself, which served as the home of the Karafuto administration before the Soviets seized the island from the Japanese in 1945. The strong ethnographic section has some unique Aino artefacts and photos from back before the original south Sakhalin inhabitants fled to Japan (check out the photo of the bear ceremony), plus bits on the Nivkhi and the rare Aleuts.
