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| Museum of Maritime Science: Aomi | |||
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Housed in a hulking building designed to look like a QE2-sized ocean liner, this maritime museum is literally ship-shaped! And if that didn't make it easy enough to find, it even has its own train station on the Yurikamome line.
On the grass by the entrance is a day-glow yellow "submergible research vehicle," just one of a flotilla of unusual vessels dotted in and around the museum. (We'd guess that the young man in the fast-food stall opposite is possibly a little sick of the Beatles track playing on the PA system by now.) Step on board the main museum and you'll find displays of everything from welding techniques to models of futuristic underwater research stations. All the explanations are in Japanese, but an English tape-guide is available at the entrance. The exhibits of leviathan ship parts, and the more than five hundred exquisite model seacraft speak for themselves anyway. You can also see a six-meter-long Edo sailboat and a competition-winning racing craft. Despite having a bit of a marine "otaku" air about it, the museum seems surprisingly popular. In the six months after June 2003 more than 1.3 million visitors had come to see a North Korean "spy-ship," first sunk then raised by the Japanese naval self-defense forces. There are two other ships moored next to the main building - one is a "floating pavilion" which took part in the 1992 Ship and Sea Expo, and the other was Japan's first Antarctic Observation ship. You can board these for an extra charge (or buy a combination ticket with entrance to the main museum). The museum is spacious, interactive and varied enough to keep children engaged and must be one of the few museums in the world with its own outdoor swimming pool. If you fancy visiting the "crow's nest," the museum also has a 70-meter-high viewing deck for a bird's-eye view of Tokyo's docklands. by Tony McNicol |
Museum of Maritime | ||
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