Fujiko F Fujio Museum or Doraemon Museum

This museum was opened in 2011 but I did not visit when I was studying in Tokyo.

Tickets need to be bought in advance from Lawson convenient stores equipped with this LOPPI machine for 1,000 yen per adult ticket. Everything is in Japanese but you can ask the sales assistant for help and they should(might) know what to do! (Remember to use a simple English name as the machine gets cranky with complicated names like mine: エヴァンジェリン　ネオ)

I suggest buying 3-4 days in advance to your visit to ensure that you can get your ticket. There are 4 slots a day to enter into the museum: 10am, 12pm, 2pm and 4pm. You have to enter within 30mins from the start of your slot and you are welcome to stay inside for as long as you wish until the museum closes at 6pm. Note that they do not operate on Tuesdays.

It takes nearly an hour to get there by train from Tokyo by Odakyu line to Noborito Station 登戸駅. Once you get out, go down the stairs on the right side of this photo.

You will see sign (in Japanese) pointing to the bus-stop to the left side. The museum's name in Japanese is 藤子・F・不二雄ミュージアム.

You should see a fancy blue shuttle bus waiting there for people to board on. There are a total of 4 different buses!

But it will cost you 210yen one-way. If you want to save money and take some photos of signboards decorated with characters created by the artist, I suggest walking there from Mukogaokayuen station 向ヶ丘遊園駅 (photos below).

Once you get there, you will be briefed about what you can expect from the museum. There were plenty of original artwork, projected demonstration on making comics and a replica of the artist's studio inside. Unfortunately, NO PHOTOGRAPHY ALLOWED!

On a positive note, there were English audio aids that they lend you for free. You also get a theatre ticket to view a short animation of how Doraemon and Nobita helped another robot cat(?) to get back his wallet.

We visited on a Thursday afternoon (12th Nov) and there was not much people. They also put up Christmas decoration already!

Once you finish watching the animation,  you are free to explore the sky garden filled with characters designed by Fujiko-sensei!

Ok, maybe not so filled.

Will be great if we can get on it LOL.

This position was not suggested by me... Even the Japanese lady helping us to shoot this photo was baffled.

We are weird...

All that yoga balancing work paid off XD

Really hungry after walking around. The food was quite alright and how they serve salad was really special. You pour the nicely decorated jar of vegetables into the cover of the bowl and pour the dressing on top to mix.

Desserts on the other hand was expensive and does not look special even with the character designs. Those at Sanrio Puroland looked better though more artificially processed.

You can catch these decorated signboards when you walk to the museum from Mukogaokayuen station 向ヶ丘遊園駅 through a narrow garden along a canal.

We walked out after 4pm so the skies have turned a bit dark.

By the time we reach the end, it was already over 5pm and skies had turned dark. Although we felt that the museum was highly commercialised and lacking in soul possible because it was not designed by the artist himself, we enjoyed our trip to the museum and spent a good 4-5 hours there (including lunch). I personally felt quite inspired to pick up traditional drawing again ^^

Official website: http://fujiko-museum.com/english/