There are three science museums in Tokyo: The Science Museum (at Kitanomaru); the National Science Museum (at Ueno) and the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation. Since it’s not too far from the Surugadai campus of Meiji University, I visited the Science Museum a little while back. Today I visited the Science and Innovation museum. I’ll get around to the National Science Museum at some point and add it to this review. There are photos of the Science Musuem and the Emerging Musuem in my gallery.

Science Museum (Kitanomaru)

Many science museums are devised principally or solely for children. Not being a child (no, really, I’m not!) I often find these somewhat disappointing. The Science Museum in Tokyo at Kitanomaru park was one of these. The displays are based mostly around central themes such as transport, physics, ecology, biology. It’s probably OK for a 7-12 year old and would repay a couple of hours visit. Most of the displays had English titles and often very brief English descriptions to go with the much more detailed Japanese ones (not surprising, since it’s Japan). I’m glad I didn’t spend a great deal of time travelling out to this one.

National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation

This is a little bit out of the way for me. In fact, it’s going to be a little awkward for many to get to. It’s on what appears to be created land in Tokyo harbour. If the whole thing isn’t created land, then it’s at least been extended because the edges are too regular all the way around to be natural. There are two train services to this island, which also features two parks and the Museum of Maritime Science. One’s an underground that gets there by tunnels. The other’s an elevated train that gets there by bridge. There is no interchange between the two, so be prepared for a n extra walk if you get there by the underground Rinkai line rather than the elevated Yurikamome line.

Once you get there you find a place surrounded by a mix of soulless tower blocks and odd architecture. The museum itself has a nice modern building. One of those where the base is smaller than the upper floors, making use of modern glass and steel construction to build something impossible with older materials.

The automated ticket system was irritating. The interface was a touch screen and had an option for English and Japanese. The English button was marked in English not kanji. However, once I’d selected this, it didn’t respond to requesting a particular ticket. One of the staff came over and told me to put the money in for the ticket I wanted. Once I’d deposited Y500 (not a bad price) I could select the ticket I wanted. For a science and emerging technology museum this was a bad start. Terrible interface design. There is absolutely no reason to require you to put money in first. In fact, if you want more than just the one ticket, it makes far more sense to select the type and number of tickets you want and then deposit the correct amount of money. Allowing money to be deposited first is useful, too, but should be the second not only option.

You get a printed ticket and a guide provides a leaflet (English and Japanese available) as well as a little clip to attach your ticket somewhere visible. They request the return of the little clips at the end (good for their funding and good for the environment as well, I would think). On the ground floor there the “Symbol Zone” which is just a large open space with a few couches on which you can lie down and look up at the large display globe overhead. This is a spherical version of the large exterior display screens you see a lot of around Tokyo. Quite well done. It displays things like history and predictions of global temperatures up to 2100. There’s also a “Wendy’s Burger Bar” accessible from the “Symbol Zone”. Not sure what that’s symbolic of, except the rise of American imperialist capitalism. There’s also the obligatory shop on the ground floor.

There are a some “show” areas that I didn’t go into, presenting relevant video material. I went straight up to the main exhibit areas. There’s two large-ish floors of these. They cover a wide range of subject matter, including nanotechnology, medicine, genomics, planetary science, information systems, robotics, space exploration, and high energy physics research. That’s not an exhaustive list. As it’s not a huge museum the displays on each subject are somewhat limited, but they make good use of the space. There are also some real hands-on labs – I saw some chemistry being done and there was a robotics building workshop not in use which seemed to be based on Lego mindstorm kit. The displays have a reasonable explanation attached to them in English and Japanese. They don’t dumb it down to the level of a 7 year old in here. Some of it is aimed at the children, but other things, such as the explanation of HE physics research and the search for the Higgs Boson and the supersymmetric particles, is bang up to date and intelligent. They explain the deep-sea neutron research projects, sea bed drilling, and other up to the minute topics very well. There’s lots of helpers around, with variable English (I helped explain part of the ISS module in English when the meaning of the question eluded the guide present).

In all, worth the slight trek out to see it. I didn’t feel like another museum today (it gets a bit lonely on my own) but the Museum of Maritime Science is quite close by, so probably worth planning to do both if you’re making the trek out there. While it’s not got the breadth of the Science Museum in London, nor the sheer breathtaking scale of the Apollo Rocket at Cape Canaveral, it’s an interesting and well put together set of up to date displays, explaining the background and the cutting edge together.