Edo-Tokyo Museum, Tokyo - This is a truly outstanding museum that focuses on the history of Tokyo from the Edo period under the Tokugawa shogunate to the development of modern day Tokyo. The permanent exhibits occupy two of the seven floors of this building and these consist of many large scale models of people, vehicles, buildings and entire villages. It is definitely not a boring place to visit. We spent 3 plus hours here and we had to rush through in order to see as many exhibits as possible.

My only gripe is that this museum is also very popular with the Japanese and it tends to be quite packed and there are long queues to many of the displays. Furthermore, many of the displays only contain Japanese commentary which is a great shame. There are some English commentary but the material is overwhelmingly Japanese.

Open Air Museum, Hakone - I was really looking forward to going to Hakone. Prior to the trip, I had read many glowing recommendations of this region, for its scenic beauty. On the whole, I found Hakone to a bit overrated. Perhaps, we visited in the wrong season (spring).

However, there is one very good reason for visiting Hakone and that is the Open Air Museum. This museum is set in a large area in the mountains of Hakone. This is primarily a modern art sculpture museum that feature works by Japanese as well as non-Japanese artists. It also has a large gallery of works by Picasso.

The sculptures are quite interesting and it amazes me what inspired the artists to come up with these creations. They are all very creative and set in a very pleasant mountain setting.

Peace Park, Hiroshima - The area occupied by the Hiroshima Peace Park was ground zero for the atomic bomb detonated over Hiroshima during WW2. The first thing that struck me when we arrived at Hiroshima was the amazing progress this once decimated city has made in the last fifty years. I was expecting Hiroshima to be a two-horse town seeing that it's quite a distance from Tokyo but we found a bustling metropolis here.

The Peace Park contains a number of memorials and museums to remember that fateful day in August 1945. The first photo on the left shows a memorial where many visitors have left paper cranes and other tokens of remembrance (eg. photo 2).

The A-Bomb Dome (photo 3) is one of the few buildings that was left standing after the bombing and this is notwithstanding the fact that the Dome was practically immediately under the detonation point of the bomb. This building is kept as a reminder of that day.

Photo 4 is a memorial to the children who suffered in the bombing. In particular, it remembers Sadako Sasaki who was the little girl who started folding paper cranes in the hope that she will survive her leukemia but sadly, she didn't. But her legacy of the paper cranes can be found in many places in the Peace Park.

Photo 5 shows a moment frozen in time. A watch recovered in the wreckage of the bombing shows the time of the detonation - 8.15AM. Similarly, Photo 6 which is a memorial to the victims of the bombing is a large clock showing 8.15AM with rubble surrounding the circumference of the clock.