Samurai Ninja Museum Asakusa Tokyo — Attraction in Tokyo

I booked a basic ticket online for 9.30am (it opens at 9.30am as listed on Google). I arrived at 9.30am (since it was the open time advertised and realised it actually was already open).

In future, I would have booked perhaps the 10am or 11am, so this allowed me more time leading up to it to get settled. This is because I felt it to be quite rushed when I arrived and there were a mixture of people queuing up to buy tickets (maybe for a later time).

A second staff member arrived and asked who has prepaid and I showed mine, as well as another group, and another solo traveller. He instructed us to go upstairs.

The family, myself and the other solo traveller were instructed to put on armour and choose a helmet so we can have our photos taken.  I wasnt sure what to do, how to hold the sword, or to smile or not. I felt kind of rushed as there were people before and after me and I didn't want to hold up the line.

They also thought the other solo traveller and I were travelling together, so that might have contributed to the time...

It was helpful that they had staff taking photos for people, though. It might be helpful some more if there was some suggestions on how to hold the sword and different poses or stances to take?

I was then told to go upstairs now (there were some posters on walls on this floor that I was wanting to read), and the staff said I could come back later to read them. So I assumed I could backtrack for anything I missed.

Izu was the tour guide I had when I joined the group of visitors already seated (again, I did not know they were waiting already) - Izu was very knowledgeable, positive, animated and friendly. Thank you Izu!

However as I was caught up in the dressing up at the start and having photos taken, I missed the beginning of the guided tour part of introductions and was a bit overwhelmed. I didn't realise the guided tour had already started, given that I was told to do the costume wearing first...I felt a bit disappointed as I was keen to take in all the knowledge I could.

Getting over that, the tour itself was informative, and the ninja star throwing was engaging and some fun. When it's a large group, it's kind of hard to see everything and we moved on to the next place quite quickly, I felt.

After the tour was over, we were instructed to go downstairs for trying on armour and have our photos taken. So it seems armour could have waited until after the tour if timing was short. I think that would have suited me better.

I did ask another staff if I could quickly take photos of the rooms I was in during the tour. He said there was 5 mins before the next tour started so I could, thankfully. I quickly went upstairs to take photos of what I missed in the beginning, and tried to take it in a bit more in the short time.

Anyway, I can always refer to the photos already in other reviews here to remind me of the time and what I saw. There was a lot of staff so that helps with running the event.

Overall, I would have liked more time to take in each floor after the tour was over, at my own pace. The information shared each floor was comprehensive and it takes time for me to process it.

5 stars to the guide and overall activities and layout, -1 for the bit of timing/coordinating/communication issue at the start, and maybe the option of a slower/self-paced tour...

I reserved a ticket online the day before going, lots of time spots available.

Overall, this was fun, but i wish it was slightly cheaper.

The tour staff is friendly, and everyone speaks English. I was lucky and got a really good tour guide with excellent English skills, and was happy to answer questions you have.

One thing I didn't like about this tour is that each room is timed with the tour guide, so they're kind of on a schedule and you don't have much free time at if at all to ask questions and look at the museum's material and detail, they just force you into the next room of the museum before you finish.

I was trying to take some pictures and ask some questions about some of the stuff in each of the museum rooms, but each time there's only about 1 minute of free time after the tour guide finished their speech of all the stuff in the room, then, on to the next.

After I finished the tour, I asked to go back in with a second tour group, just so that I can ignore what the tour guide was saying and read all the material, and take extra pictures my second time through. Luckily my tour guide staff was nice and she let me do that.

Overall you just feel extremely rushed, which I don't like given the price I paid to enter a "museum".

One more thing is that the website says you get to wear samurai armor, but that's not exactly true. You get the try on a metal samurai helmet (cool!), but in terms of the "armor" and the "sword" they claim that you can wear, it's actually foam and wood. So it's all fake.

I didn't expect to wear 200+ year old armor and swords, but I was expecting to wear some kind of authentic recreation with a full (but metal) sword.

So that was disappointing 😢.

There is a kind of fun part at the end where you have a ninja throwing star competition with everyone. Only one person in each group gets a prize, but it's still fun.

Overall, I wish the tours were slower so you can look and read all the material, and that the website was more honest about the activities (wearing stuff for photos).

The gift shop is very disappointing. It's basically just a bunch of recreation tourist swords and plastic ninja toys. I was hoping there would be something a little bit more interesting like the ability to buy recreation samurai armor, some picture and history books about samurai, or something along those lines.

2/5 for now.

4/5 I'd they fix those two issues (Rushed timed tours, and non-authenric foam armor wearing).

5/5 if they lowered price to...

We booked the 3-hour Samurai & Ninja experience and had an amazing time with Kenny and Kei! I recommend booking this in advance, since the timeslots do fill up relatively quickly.

It included the 1-hour samurai lesson, 1-hour ninja lesson and the guided tour (done in this order).

Kei was an awesome guide, knowledgeable, enthusiastic and she made sure the tour was as interactive as possible. The tour mainly focused on the history of Japan, during the time of the samurais and ninjas (duh). The displays were very cool and I was extremely impressed by how pristine the katanas were considering their age (turns out the blades are actually actively maintained by professionals!!) At the end of the tour, we got to throw shurikens and a competition was held among participants.

Kenny was our instructor for the lessons and he was spectacular! He made the lessons fun with his jokes, but also made sure no one got hurt by clearly communicating the rules. He was energetic and passionate, which was very contagious.

During the samurai and ninja lesson, there were plenty of time for photos with (replica) steel samurai swords and (replica) ninja weapons (think shuriken, kunai, kusarigama, etc).

We learned how to wear traditional samurai clothing (shitagi and hakama), how to "wear" a katana, how to draw/sheath the sword, and we learned some basic Kenjutsu techniques. At the end of our samurai lesson, we had a chance to "duel" other participants as well as our instructor, Kenny. (We totally beat him and totally did not lose at all 🫣)

In the ninja lesson, we learned how to throw shurikens and how to use a fukiya (blow gun). Competitions for shuriken throwing and fukiya were held.

Overall, we had an amazing time here and would definitely recommend getting both experiences.

P.S we did not have a lot of opportunities to take photos of the displays during the guided tour since we wanted to listen to the narration. However, Kei was very accommodating and allowed us to go through the showrooms again after the tour had ended to take photos of the displays when we...