SAMURAI NINJA MUSEUM Kyoto — Attraction in Kyoto

I went to the samurai and ninja museum with a few friends during our visit to Kyoto. The staff were really nice, but the quality of the museum itself was not what we expected for the price of 2900yen, unfortunately - it felt like a tourist trap.

We were told that the usual package you get is a 30min guided tour of the museum, which also includes getting to try on a samurai armour and throw shuriken (ninja stars), which would cost a little over 3000 yen. We asked if it was possible to only get the guided tour since we weren't too keen on the extra experiences at the end. This was not possible, but we could get a 10% discount if we just explored the museum by ourselves. It wasn't a significant discount, but we chose this option.

The museum was very, very small. If you walked at a leisurely pace, you could walk through it in less than one minute. All the information written below photos was extremely lengthy, often amounting to several hundred words. We had the time to read it, but I imagine that if you were in a guided tour group here, reading a several hundred word long text underneath each photo wouldn't really be feasible (it would also be tiring and uninspiring after a short while). Even in most regular museums that haven't been designed specifically for mainly being visited through guided tours, they would at most only have a small paragraph written each place one could find text.

We also did some research on certain details in these texts that seemed off, like the average height of a samurai being 150cm tall. This would've meant that some of them would be 140cm tall, which seems extremely short. Out of the eight other sources we checked with, only one of them said 150cm, all the other ones indicated that the average height of a samurai was 160-170cm tall. That left us wondering what other information might be inaccurate here.

The name of the museum itself is also misleading, as there is next to no ninja stuff here - it's far from a 50/50 allocation of space for samurai and ninja history as the name might suggest.

Another weird thing is that when we walked into the first room, we were quickly ushered into the next one, despite there clearly being a lot to see there. Having only gotten a 10% discount it seemed kind of cheap to not let us at least spend half a minute in the first room.

Before we left, a guided tour started to catch up with us as we were battling through the long passages of text. Even though it wasn't a very spacious room, a group of what must've been 25-30 people followed the guide around. Despite the smallness of the museum and the high price (all other museums we went to in Japan cost 10 or 20% of the price of this one), it was no intimate guided tour for a small group of people at all.

In conclusion, it felt a lot like an expensive tourist trap, so I would highly recommend spending your money on food or...

This is a fun experience that is exceptionally well marketed. Unlike most places I have been during my short time in Japan, this tour appeared to be entirely international tourists.

The "museum" consists of four modest rooms that the group journeys through as the guide shares some Samurai history. He was excellent and shared with our group in English. The exhibits were nice, but it wasn't as extensive as I envisioned when picturing a highly regarded samurai museum.

The throwing star lesson after the museum tour was a fun addendum. The group had to go downstairs, then swing around and go back up a few flights of stairs to get to that room. I loved the plastic throwing star, and I was sad to give it back. We even had a little competition. Honestly though, I was anxious for the safety of the kids next to me because he kept running to get his star too soon, and I was anxious for my safety because people kept throwing when they weren't supposed to.

Finally, we were invited to go to one more room to do photos in the samurai armor. That was an expedition. They even had us scan a map link before we started walking to the place, and a group mostly scattered along the way before a good bunch of us made our way there. It was quite a walk through the shopping area . The costume armor is cheap armor, but it was a fun thing to do. While the swords weren't sharp, they were real metal swords. Again, the same sweet kid frightened me quite a bit while he was playing with the sword. Gratefully he didn't stab anyone on accident.

Overall, I enjoyed this experience, and I'm glad I did it. Their space situation is weird, but they make good use of what they have in a tight shopping corridor. That said, amid the other wonderful things to do during a once in a lifetime trip to Japan, this honestly shouldn't have made the cut.

If you do decide to go, it's worth booking in advance to lock in your space and be sure everything...

This place is horrible. Please avoid. What surprised us throughout our Japan trip was that how kind people are and they never try to cheat. They believe in their values and try to help even if they don’t know English very well. This place was total opposite. Here people talk perfect English but are very rude and cheat. My husband booked basic package at 12pm. Then when we checked all the other packages on their website, it was too confusing ( some said samurai and some said ninja). We thought we wanted both and my son wanted to experience the sword but we weren’t sure of the age limit for that. So we walked in early when they open and tried to ask them about each package. The guy at the reception was very rude.He did not explain us anything and refused to explain. He made fun of us in Japanese and upgraded us to some package which did not include sword experience. Then once we finished when we told him we were specifically looking for sword experience because our son wanted it. He told us now we have to take entire new package (30000 yen )and we ended up taking it. It’s way too overpriced. The sword experience was not worth that price at all. It was just with wooden swords even for adults. The picture on website make it look like with real swords. This place is tourist trap. They are so overbooked that people there don’t have time to talk. Our whole Japan trip experience is ruined by this one. The guy who did the museum tour did not know anything. He was giving random answers to people’s questions. The guys at the reception are worst. They are supposed to explain things to people. Instead they were trying to just pack as many people in as possible and not explaining things and making money. We will be warning everyone we know to...