Tokyo day 3: museum day

Friday, April 18, 2014
Tokyo, Kanto, Japan
Today we had another rainy day (mostly drizzle, though) and we pretty much explored every neighbourhood in Tokyo worth exploring, so we decided to spend the day indoors going to some museums. We had some Japanese-style breakfast and then bought a couple of all-day subway passes for easy transportation.

First, we visited the Japanese Sword Museum that preserves traditional Japanese swords as a form of art and traditional craft. The museum is quite small, but we learned a bit about the process of making a sword in a traditional way and saw some fine blades engraved with various religious symbols.

Next, we took another subway to Ueno park and there we visited the National Science Museum. That museum was much larger than the previous and featured a 360 degrees theatre (where movie is projected all around you, also above and below), excellent natural history exhibits, minerals, meteorites, history of Japanese people, hands-on exhibits that demonstrate various laws of physics and so on.

After, we had some lunch and took a subway to Akihabara again, since we had some time to waste. There we wondered around various hobby shops and I found a figurine that I was interested in, from a very lighthearted anime/manga Nichijou (Everyday Life).

Then we took subway to Ikebukuro, another one of Tokyo's shopping and entertainment districts. We walked to Sunshine City, a giant shopping complex with an aquarium and a planetarium. We bought tickets to a planetarium show, it was very comfortable and relaxing, The narrator was saying something in Japanese, the room was dark, seats reclining and comfortable, they were even blowing various smells into the auditorium (lavender, honey and some others), so I could barely stay awake.. Finally, we had some sushi at a fancy restaurant and headed back to the hotel.

Tomorrow is the flight back to Toronto, so the trip is nearly complete. I think I have seen enough of Tokyo (visited pretty much every district worth visiting: Shinjuku, Shibuya, Asakusa, Sumida, Ueno, Akihabara, Ginza, Marunouchi, Roppongi and Ikebukuro), so next time I come to Japan I can safely skip it.
Other Entries

Photos & Videos

Comments

2025-02-11

Comment code: Ask author if the code is blank