Omiya Railway Museum after the Tsukiji Outer Market was the next stop and a ball of fun, especially for P who adores all things locomotive. The museum interestingly isn’t purposed to showcase all types of trains – just the ones specific to Japan.
We got there right before admissions started at 10AM, and there was a huge crowd already queued up. And when ticketing was opened, the crowds literally dashed for the counters, bought tickets, and a number ran through gantries as fast as they could, and all turned left once past the admission gantries. We were wondering what the commotion was all about, and only realised that a number were making a beeline for the miniature driving train driving experience – apparently one of the most popular interactive exhibits in the museum. By the time we’d leisurely walked to the counter for this miniature driving train experience at 10:05AM, we were advised that the next available rides was at 1PM. Wow. We weren’t planning to spend that much time in the museum, so had to skip this exhibit.
Still, the first level is heaven for train lovers: the main hall there – called ‘Rolling Stock Station’ has 36 railway cars on display. Photographers could just go nuts in this hall. This huge collection comprises train cars of all kinds and ages, and is really impressive, even for someone like myself who’s at most more interested in trains as photographic subjects than its technology or purposes. The second and third floors also have interactive science exhibits that demonstrate different aspects of the underlining physics and technology used to drive trains: the kids expended quite a bit of energy here trying out each exhibit – which was just fine for parents to find a place to sit down and rest!
We spent about 2.5 hours in the museum, and barely just covered half of the exhibits and skipped all of the hands-on. So, bookmarked this place if we’re coming back in this direction again in the future.
Continued in the next post: Shinjuku Gyoen!
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