{"id":5777,"date":"2023-07-24T15:11:24","date_gmt":"2023-07-24T06:11:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/tokyo-railway-museum-see-japans-locomotive-history\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T11:33:44","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T02:33:44","slug":"tokyo-railway-museum-see-japans-locomotive-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/tokyo-railway-museum-see-japans-locomotive-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Tokyo’s Railway Museum: See Japan\u2019s Locomotive History"},"content":{"rendered":"

A good many visitors to Japan have been known to utter out loud, \u201cThere sure are a lot of trains in Japan!\u201d \u2026And they wouldn\u2019t be wrong! We happen to have the world\u2019s highest per capita train ridership<\/a>\u00a0and are home to\u00a0The world\u2019s busiest station<\/a>. It is not an overstatement to say that rails built modern-day Japan, and finding out just how true this is and how that came to be is pretty interesting, not to mention it makes for a good outing by yourself or with the family.<\/p>\n

So what can we find inside? The Railway Museum<\/a> (\u9244\u9053\u535a\u7269\u9928 Tetsud\u014d Hakubutsukan) opened on October 14th, 2007. It was built and operated by the East Japan Railway Culture Foundation, a non-profit affiliate of the East Japan Railway Company (JR East)<\/a>, as a successor to the original museum that used to be located just east Ochanomizu station under the JR tracks near Akihabara.<\/p>\n

Inside you\u2019ll find restored and preserved 30 railway cars covering everything from steam engines to the Shinkansen \u201cBullet Train.\u201d Not to be missed are the train cab simulators which are every bit what you\u2019d face if you were to pilot a JR train, down to the last switch and dial. There are an extensive array of railway dioramas so finely detailed you\u2019ll look for your particular station to see if they\u2019ve captured it right. This is a proper museum outside the interactive bits, so there\u2019s also some brain food for those who want to know about Japan Rail from its inception in the late 1800s through artifacts and books, video booths, and a research room. Rounding out the amenities, there\u2019s a multi-purpose hall, a gallery balcony overlooking the Joetsu and Hokuriku Shinkansen lines, a cafeteria and children\u2019s play area, and the museum shop. Best of all, you can download a great interactive app from the website, which will guide you through the museum in English. It is a wonderful experience for anyone, especially those of us who are train conductors at heart.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Getting There<\/strong><\/p>\n

Access:<\/b>\u00a0The Railway Museum is located next to\u00a0Tetsudo Hakubutsukan Station<\/a> on the New Shuttle Line, one stop north of Omiya Station.
\nWebsite:<\/b>\u00a0THE RAILWAY MUSEUM<\/a>
\nHours:<\/b> Every day except Tuesdays, 10 am-5:30 pm; Closed December 29~January 1 for New Year\u2019s holidays.
\nAdmission:<\/b> Adults 1,330 yen, Students 620 yen, Children (Preschool children three years and older) 310 yen<\/p>\n

Shimogasa<\/a>, CC BY-SA 4.0<\/a>, via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A good many visitors to Japan have been known to utter out loud, \u201cThere sure are a lot of trains in Japan!\u201d \u2026And they wouldn\u2019t be wrong! We happen to have the world\u2019s highest per capita train ridership\u00a0and are home to\u00a0The world\u2019s busiest station. It is not an overstatement to say that rails built modern-day […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":5778,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[162,37],"tags":[47,176,515,45,416],"class_list":["post-5777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family-friendly","category-tokyo-2","tag-tokyo-city-2","tag-tokyo-day-trips","tag-tokyo-family-fun","tag-tokyo-metropolis-2","tag-tokyo-prefecture"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5777"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49754,"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5777\/revisions\/49754"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}