Edo Tokyo Museum

Japan is a country with a very diverse culture. They move towards innovation which can be seen in how they progress in technological things but, at the same time, they also support the preservation of historical things to their culture. This support can be seen in the amount of historical establishments and landmarks that were constantly rebuilt to their original form after several fires and bombings in the history of Japan. There is a museum found in Tokyo that showcases both these sides of Japan and this museum is the Edo-Tokyo Museum.

A Guide Inside of the Edo-Tokyo Museum in Japan

This museum looks like a structure with numerous floors because of how high it looks from the outside but it is actually only made up of 7 floors. Each floor serves a certain purpose and to save you time from reading and listening to briefings on where to find whatever it is that you’re looking for, here is a breakdown of the floor functions.

Since the 1st floor is the entrance, you can already expect this floor to serve more than one purpose. The 1st floor is where you will be able to find one of the ticket counters in the building so that you may gain access to the exhibits, particularly the permanent exhibits which are the likes of the Nihonbashi and all the other life-size replicas. The other floor where you can find a ticket counter is the 3rd floor. A ticket for one person is usually sold at 600 yen but there are cases where this changes. If you are over 65 years old, your admission fee would only be 300 yen. If you are a college student or a student of a vocational school, you will be able to buy a ticket for the price of 480 yen. If you are a junior high school student or a high school student from a school that is not in Tokyo, you will be able to buy a ticket for a price of 300 yen.

There are also group ticket packages offered in this establishment. Your group would need to be at least 20 people to qualify for the group packages. General admission would cost 480 yen per person. Anyone who is over 65 years old that is part of the group will have their ticket sold to them for a price of 240 yen. Any college student or vocational school student would need only pay 380 yen for a ticket. Again, if you are a high school student from a school outside of Tokyo, you only pay 240 yen for a ticket. There is also an exception to the admission fee and it applies for both solo and group packages. To get your free admission to the permanent exhibits, you just need to be a student from a junior high school, primary school, or a preschool that is located in Tokyo or you have to be resident of Tokyo. Once this has been verified, you will get your free ticket to the exhibit.

The 1st floor or 7th floor, these floors are where you’ll find the restaurants in the building. Aside from the food that you can find on the 7th floor, you will also be able to find the library of the building on this floor. If you are looking for gifts and goodies to bring home, you’ll be happy to know that the museum shops where you can buy souvenirs can be found on the 1st and 5th floor of the building.

The rest of the floors are used as spaces for the exhibits but during times of the year that there are special and feature exhibitions like the ones mentioned above, it is usually the 1st and 5th floor that is used for this purpose. The special exhibitions can be found on the 1st floor while the feature exhibitions can be found on the 5th floor. Another useful thing to know for those who want an audio guide for the tour is that the audio guides for the permanent exhibition can be found on the 6th floor.

There are many other additional functions that can be found on different floors like how wheelchair services are offered on the 1st, 5th and 6th floors or like how baby strollers are available on the 1st and 6th floors. Due to the on-going renovation of the establishment, these functions may change once the museum opens again so make sure to check up on these details.

The Opening Hours of the Edo-Tokyo Museum and How to Get There

Before the museum closed temporarily due to the renovation, they used to operate from 9:30 AM until 5:30 PM. On Saturdays, the museum extends its operating hours to 7:30 at night. For any of these days, admission is only open until the last 30 minutes of their operating hours. This means that if you want to enjoy the museum when it is near its closing time, you’ll have to go in 30 minutes before it closes and that 30 minutes before it closes would be all the time you get to view everything in the permanent exhibits.

Although possible, this isn’t recommendable because it would be quite stressful and less entertaining to view all these great things on a time limit. The museum is very accessible anyway so there shouldn’t be a reason for you to only reach the last 30 minutes. It is a 5-minute walk from the JR Ryogoku Station and since all trains in Japan are well connected, it should be a breeze to reach the Ryogoku Station no matter where you are coming from.

If you’re looking for housing or any sort of accommodation that is near here, you’ll be very pleased to know that hotels like the Hotel Tokyu Stay Monzen-Nakacho is only just a couple of stations away too. This hotel is literally a minute away from the Monzen-Nakacho Station and booking this hotel would give you great access to other attractions like Disney and Skytree.

Tokyo is a frequently visited city by all sorts of people. If you find yourself in Tokyo and looking for something that you won’t find anywhere else in the world, remember that this amazingly unique Edo-Tokyo Museum is only a couple of minutes away from a station that is also a couple of train stations away from anywhere in Japan. You will surely not regret experiencing and learning from this museum because of how it presents its exhibits in extraordinary ways.