Day 25 : Finally Going to the Museum

So last night after I did laundry, I still had to work. Since I am working for the duration of this trip. Around 2 AM my time, around when core hours at work start, I actually started to feel a bit unwell. I thought I felt feverish and maybe a little dizzy. I pushed through it since I didn't have many meetings and could go to sleep afterwards but it persisted the entire time I was awake. Around 4:20 AM, I actually felt really shaky and had thought that maybe an earthquake was happening so I hid under the apartment's door frame.

I actually wasn't sure if there had been an earthquake or not since I hadn't received any alerts about it and since I immediately googled it and didn't see any results I thought maybe I was hallucinating from being tired. Either way, if there had been an earthquake it hadn't been super intense.

After I calmed down, I managed to go to sleep around 5 AM. I managed to sleep in until around 12 PM, which is more sleep than I have been getting lately, so I thought that was pretty good. I still wasn't feeling great but I had began to whittle down my sleep debt. Oddly, I hopped on Twitter (which isn't usual for me), and to my surprise, I found out there had been an earthquake and it had sent an alert to people in Tokyo! After looking it up online, I found out there was a mangitude 5 eartquake across Tokyo bay in the Chiba prefecture and it had resulted in a light shaking in the area I was staying in. Wow, my first earthquake!

Data via the Japan Meteorological Agency, see more about this specific quake here.

Anyway, the fact that I couldn't necessarily distinguish an earthquake from being tired should tell you the state I was in. I wanted to make the most of final few days in Tokyo, so decided I would finally go to the National Museum of Nature and Science. By the time I bought tickets and made it to Ueno, it was 3 PM, so I would only be out 2 hours today and then go home to rest.

The was actually also a lucky day to decide for this since it turned out to be raining pretty hard.

I had managed to snag a ticket to the special exhibit, the Dinosaur Expo 2023.

Image originally from the special exhibit site, copied here in case that site goes offline after the exhibit is over

The exhibit was largely about the Zuul crurivastator, a herbivore with a spiky back and tail. It's name in Latin basically means ankle destroyer because it's tail would be at the right height to destroy the ankles of predators, if I remember the exhibit correctly.

One note about special exhibits at this museum if you plan to visit in the future. Although there is an audio guide available in English, make sure to bring your own headphones since the guide is accessible online (the Japanese audio tour is a more traditional borrowed device). I didn't have headphones, so I wasn't able to follow along but the big signs at the entrance to each room had English on them which did a good job giving context to what I would see in each room. Each individual exhibit in the room had Japanese-only signage though. I didn't find it too detrimental to my experience overall though. They did have videos playing softly too which were actually in English (subbed in Japanese) since the fossils and exhibit were loaned by the Royal Ontario Museum.

A depiction of Zuul facing off against a Gorgosaurus

Looking at some of the exhibits makes you glad to be at the top of the food chain these days. Can you imagine if we had to regularly face off with these guys? They're so big!

I'd be so scared to come across one. I mean this is like 1000x the size of a spider, which I am already of afraid of. Heck, even herbivores would absolutely demolish a human. Zuul itself could definitely take on a tank if you ask me.

For some reason this exhibit also had a Dodo skeleton.

I liked the exhibit but don't know if it was worth ¥2,200. For reference, the permanent exhibit is only ¥600. It appears that the special ticket does get access to the permanent exhibits though (which I hadn't known ahead of time so had bought both). I think it is a cool experience though if you have the budget for it.

After exploring Dino Expo, I was a bit hungry so decided to grab a bite to eat at the museum's restaurant. I luckily got a window seat overlooking the main exhibit hall.

Oops, wrong thing was in focus

Obviously, all of the food here was themed to match the theme of the museum. I chose the coolest one. Surprisingly it looked exactly like the photo on the menu!

Dino tracks and a volcano, are you kidding me??? So cool! It was also really tasty! Following the random food prices in Japan, it was also relatively cheap at only ¥1,200.

I then stumbled into the permanent exhibit hall and felt like I had snuck in, until I realized that this was intended if you had purchased the special ticket. I managed to brought a couple of the floors quickly as the closing time rapidly approached. The permanent exhibits also has dinosaur fossils if that's what you are looking for, albeit less than the current special exhibit.

The last exhibit I was able to check out before it closed was a hall about Nobel prizes received by Japanese scientists. It covered many fields of study, but I have a hard time getting as excited about Chemistry or other fields as I do about Physics. This room also had various science experiments/apparatuses to show certain effects but they were only labeled in Japanese. That actually kind of made it fun though, since when you pressed the button you had to keep guessing what was going to happen until it did happen!

Once the museum closed, I headed back to Ueno station and grabbed an eel bento and a snack to take home for dinner.

After eating, I napped for a few hours and that helped me feel a little better. I made the executive decision to take a sick day at work and focus on resting up.