Who says that a visit to the museum is boring. Well, a visit to the National Science Museum in Tokyo changed my perception. In 2006, my wife and I brought our kids to Tokyo for holidays. Sure, everyone knows about Tokyo Disneyland. I love Tokyo Disneyland too. Actually, it was my second visit to Disneyland, the first was about seventeen years ago during our honeymoon. But you cannot survive just on Disneyland with kids in Tokyo. While researching on what to do in Tokyo, I changed upon the National Science Museum and decided to include it in my itinerary. I had some apprehension, of course, as I do not know how my children would feel about a visit to the museum.
Just a bit of history. The National Science Centre was established in Oct 1871 and went by the name of Ministry of Education Museum. It adopted its latest name in Jun 1949. The main museum is located in Ueno with a branch in Shinjuku. Besides being known as a major train station in Japan, Ueno is a nature locale signified by the spacious Ueno Park (which include the zoo). Of course, Ueno is also home to some of Tokyo's finest cultural sites, including the Tokyo National Museum, the National Museum of Western Art, and the National Science Museum, as well as a major public concert hall (extracted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ueno,_Tokyo).
Given the limited time (we went in the afternoon), we decided to focus on the new building at the museum. We were not disappointed as it is basically an all-in-one museum covering themes such as evolution of life to a look into the future -the mystery of space. I would say my children were definitely attracted by the dinosaurs display ranging from T-Rex to the genial plant eaters. In the section covering Science and Technology, there were many hands on experiments for visitors - young and old- to try out. This is something like our very own Singapore Science Centre.
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