This weekend on Sunday, I took the kids to what's known in Tokyo as the "Science Museum," or Kagaku Gijutsukan. It's in Kitanomaru Koen (park) near the Imperial Palace.
We took the subway to Kudanshita station to the boundary of the park...
The "Must Love Japan" website tells me that the parkland used to be part of Edo Castle and is now "part of The Imperial Palace Outer Garden." So we walked over a bridge and gazed down at the massive moat that protected the old castle...
...and then walked thru these two massive gates.
We walked through the park and past the Nippon Budokan, a famous architectural structure that was built for the judo competition in the 1960 Olympics. Wikipedia tells me that it's now used for rock concerts, and that the Beatles played their first Japanese concert here in 1966.
Then we came to the museum.
Tickets are cheap, 600 yen/adult and 250 yen/child over 4. On the whole, I'd give the museum a B-, but it did have some cool stuff related to physical science: magnetics, levers and gears, robotics, light and electricity.
Here are some photos of what we did and saw there.
Among the robots was this "secretary," who was sitting in a glass booth. If you said something to her - like, say, "konnichiwa"- she responded with a stream of Japanese that I couldn't understand beyond "my name is..."
The museum also had this small restaurant on the 4th floor, run by two older ladies who dished up soba and udon noodles in cold or hot broth - and corn dogs for the kids.
It wasn't the best day trip we'd ever had, but I would take the kids back there when they're a little older.
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