Then, finally I had arrived at the entrance of Edo-Tokyo Museum and went to a box office, not a ticket machine as this is Edo. I asked one ticket to a woman behind the glass, and she asked me if an ordinary ticket is alright, with a polite but hesitant smile. I immediately understood her message because I had met such quizzical and apologetic smiles at the box of National Science Museum and several garden-park gates. It means if you were older than 65, you could buy a cheaper elder’s ticket instead.
It was September 8, my 65th birthday! I took out my ID issued from the Ward Office and gave it to her. “Congratulation!” she said with a big smile and sold me ￥300 ticket instead of ￥600 normal ticket.
The museum floors are on the 3rd and 4th, and the suggested route starts from the fourth by crossing the replicated Nohonbashi bridge to ancient Edo pavilion
The 4th floor mainly exhibits and explain about Edo for the upper class, or bushi-samurai socity with archives and artifacts as well as scale models.
People’s Edo, or “Chonin” class comprised with craftsmen and marchants is on the half of 3rd floor and cultures, literature and performing arts of the era are exhibited, some items offer first-hand experiences. The other half of the 3rd floor occupies Meiji (modernized era) and then after until the 1960s.
There are several georamas, unfolding Edo Castle, Nihinbashi Business Street and Ryogoku entertainment spot and the like. On their grounds, there are numerous miniscule meticulously precision bean dolls even having facial expressions. If you bring a camera with high magnification lens, you can shoot a bean figure’s smile which might be telling you a happy birthday!
(the end of the walking.)?
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