Fairly large immaculate and well designed museum in a rather inconvenient location. English labels and subtitles in many places. It was located in Shibuya from 1978 until 2013.

I'm sure everyone asks "why tobacco and salt?" when they first hear about this museum. I know I did. The Japanese government kept a monopoly over the domestic sale of these two commodities for a long time. Sales regulations were relaxed in 1985 for tobacco and 1997 for salt.

The first floor has free lockers and a small gift shop where you can buy salt and tobacco (naturally). A number of varieties and some only tangentially related novelty items are also available. There is also a workshop room which is open for special events.

The salt exhibits take up most of the second floor. This was a good mix of real, historical artifacts, scale models, and videos. Few hands on activities. Most of the space was given over to the many methods used over time to extract salt from the ground and from the sea. There is also a special exhibits space here.

The third floor contained the tobacco exhibits which also contained a lot of historical background and reconstructed artifacts. A large area was given over to an amazing collection of antique pipes from all around the world. There is also a theater and a smoking room on this floor. I would've liked to see more content devoted to the dangers of smoking but the place seems to be located in a former Japan Tobacco warehouse so you can't expect too much there.

The fourth floor has a library while the top floor has a space for eating and drinking with a few drink vending machines and a view of the Sky Tree.

The cost is very affordable but the content is not compelling for young kids. Take them to play on the nearby Oyokokawa river park instead. Recommended for junior high school kids and up with an interest in historical topics.