Three Museums and a Square.

Friday the 17th.

Jen really wanted to visit the JCII Camera Museum. The Japan Camera Industry Institute was established in order to maintain and improve the quality of Japanese cameras. This collection is made up of almost 4000 cameras! They possess one of only a few original Daguerreotype cameras (the world's first camera 1839), the first digital camera prototype and tons of other cool cameras. Jen was freaking out. Entire displays traced the development of the camera, all in Japanese (!), from the humble beginnings all the way up to the Nikon D40. It was really interesting.

Ironically, you could not take any pictures.

This oldie was set up outside, no doubt to satisfy the desire to photograph.

Say "Cheese".

Hey! Don't move-the exposure takes 10 minutes!

After the camera museum we took a couple of subways out to the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo. Well, almost--we had to walk for about ten minutes. We ate boxed lunches in the adjacent park and then had cool iced coffees. Only then did we head inside. Oh my god. There were so many people. A sea in fact. A sign indicated that it was an 80 minute wait just to get in! Not interested in standing around for that long, we bailed.

Instead, we headed for the Tokyo-Edo Museum.

The building resembles the OCAD table top building.

This museum was great. Lots of quality displays, artefacts and lots of english signage.

The theatre displays were particularly good.

Just 5 more minutes....

The Lonely Planet was made a liar once more, as it promised the museum was open until 8pm. In fact, it closed at 5:30 much to our dismay. We ended up rushing through the last sections of the museum and Jen was ushered out of the building last--a fact she is quite proud of.

From there, yes our day continued, we went to Shibuya to experience the controlled chaos one last time. When I first saw it, I wanted to have a coffee in the window of the 2nd story Starbucks overlooking the square. So, we bought iced coffees and actually scored a window seat. It was great. You cannot even imagine the scene. Every time the lights change thousands of people cross the intersection. Seriously, thousands.

Shibuya station is at the top left--check out the crowd building on the corner.

GO!!!

Imagine being in that cab?

This is what it looks like from a crowds-eye perspective.