The Ueno Royal Museum — Attraction in Tokyo

Ok, stop right there and think just for one minute... do I like museums??

If your answer No.... well, this is not the place for you. If you said yes, i gotta tell you something.

This place, its in the Ueno district of tokio, i Stayed there for three different ocation, witout knowing about this place or not having time to explore.

In our third time visiting this place we found out from our hotel it was a 15 minute walk, so decided to kill some time here.

You gotta know their exposition its not that cheap, if im not mistaken, the entrance to the museum was arround 11000 yen, for the whole exhibit.

Im not gonna lie to you, if you enjoy art, history, pieces of private colections and history in general, this place holds a standard all year colection, besides limited time exhibits. In our visit they hade the production of ancient vases in precious forms, made out in year 1400 if im not mistaken.

The whole exhibition its huge, if you are taking time to read about all the pieces you might geth there facinating yourself for 4 or more hours.

There are some picture forbidden exhibition, that you should respect.

Please be polite, it could be crowded depending the time of the year you visit. Please be aware of that.

By the way, katana exhibition was a delight to the vision.

By the way, if you bring children in this place... you might miss a lot of what you can see. specially little ones...

Not against them, just saying, they might not find any amaze on ancient art...

We visited the museum's Monet Series Exhibition that ran from Oct 2023 to Jan 2024.

Tickets are apparently sold only on-site. A purchaser's timed-entry is determined by when they arrive and buy their ticket. We visited on a Dec Friday afternoon, and were able to enter immediately after purchasing tickets.

There is no permanent exhibition, but rather a series of temporary exhibitions. The entry fee varies by exhibition, and (at least for the Monet exhibition) are higher on weekends and holidays.

Gift shop entry requires purchasing an exhibition ticket, at least for the Monet exhibition.

MONET EXHIBITION: 5.0. Both those who are already fans of Monet's work and those who want to learn about him would enjoy this overview of his paintings and how his "series" works developed. Japanese-only audioguides are available. The name of each painting is provided in both Japanese and English, as are the wall panels that introduce each section.

FACILTIES: 3.0. Though the exhibition itself was excellent, and though the staff controls the number of people entering, both the exhibition itself and the gift shop were very crowded during our visit. Viewing the paintings from farther than 2 feet away was a huge challenge as they were mostly blocked by the deep crowds shuffling slowly by each work and the posted descriptions; the gift shop crowd was even more dense. Skills acquired through riding packed Japanese trains will aid one's ability...

Terrible experience, one of the worst!

with great expectations, I came to see the 5 Stars of Ukiyo-e Artists, which was truly a fantastic exhibition. The problem is that very limited language support was provided at the exhibit. So I had to use my phone to take snapshots of the exhibit labels on Google Translate in order to understand the artwork.

But then I was stopped by the staff because they thought I was taking photos of the paintings. After I explained, I only got in response was ‘sorry’ on repeat. Was the staff sorry that I should not have pulled out my phone or was she sorry that she made a mistake of approaching me? I couldn’t tell. Like I said, sorry on repeat.

Anyhow, my experience was ruined. I felt like a thief trying to steal images from this exhibition while all I was only trying to do was get a better understanding of the background story of these masterpieces.

No wonder I saw almost zero tourists at this fantastic show in a city full of foreign visitors. It almost felt like Japanese people were gatekeeping these art gems from the outside world. What a shame cuz this is indeed an incredible exhibit.

Somebody needs to inform the management...