As a theoretical physicist, I have the chance to travel the world for my work very often. Even too often sometimes. A few years ago, a retirement party for one professor I know well brought me to Japan for the first time. As both @lamouthe and myself were super curious and super excited about this country, we took this opportunity to go there together, with the maxithillon, and spend two weeks to visit a few places.
This being said, I acknowledge the fact that in my field, people are generally not very happy to get retired and want to continue working. Therefore, why partying? Good question. I will probably answer it in about 30-40 years (as the retirement age changes year after year).
I recently rediscovered the pictures of this trip, and then decided to start talking about it through our lesmouths-travel account. I hope this could give ideas to anyone who wants to visit Japan about things to do.
[image credits: myself (Canon EOS Rebel T2i)]
So we were in Japan, as a family, with a little boy (who was about to get 4 at that time).
Our first destination in the Land of the Rising Sun was Tokyo, the largest metropolitan area in the world in terms of population (according to Wikipedia) with 37 millions of inhabitants.
Of course, the city was too huge so that we could do everything in there, especially as we were traveling with our son: small legs, quickly tired, etc., like any child of this age. But this was not a problem for us and we adapted the our rhythm of our visits.
As a starter, we targeted the Science Museum of Tokyo. I am a scientist after all, and this is my duty to bring my family to science museums all over the world… ;)
[image credits: myself (Canon EOS Rebel T2i)]
I provide a few pictures of the inside of the museum above, on which I replaced the face of my son by a robot (as well as the face of @lamouthe). No way I will share any explicit picture of him on the Internet! I leave him this opportunity when he will be bigger.
As can be guessed from the pictures, the museum is very interactive and therefore well suited for children. They can touch everything, try everything, make their own experiments under the form of games.
All STEM fields are covered. Physics of course, but also chemistry, health, engineering, motors, electricity, technologies, environment, computers, etc. Even if the museum is called a Science Museum, it could have been named a STEM Museum without any problem.
Unfortunately, I do not have that many pictures (in particular because we spent time trying all the different things). But I hope the three which I show here will give an idea about the museum (especially the part dedicated to cars and trucks, as well as to construction). For those who are interested, plenty of pictures are available on TripAdvisor.
One little point: it is better to go there with a Japanese friend, as most explanations are in Japanese, and none of us was speaking Japanese.
In terms of location, the museum is very close to the Imperial Palace, and the park around it is a great place as well to relax and enjoy calm inside a crowded city.
But this will be the topic of my next post :)