Nintendo Museum

Before you go

• - Tickets are sold mainly by lottery (leftover slots go on sale first-come, see below), so a walk-in visit does not work. Entries open three months before your visit, need a free Nintendo account, and ask for the name and phone number of every visitor; you pay only if you win, by credit card. If you lose, slots freed by cancellations go on sale first-come, up to two months ahead, so check again. The museum is closed on Tuesdays (if Tuesday is a national holiday, it opens that day and closes the next Wednesday instead) and from December 30 to January 3, and may close in bad weather, with an email to ticket holders.
• - At the security gate, show the QR ticket and one ID; children under school age need a name document too, and for minors a health insurance card or a maternal and child health handbook will do. Your passport counts as your ID. Suitcases and large bags cannot go in, and free coin lockers stand before the gate (a 100-yen coin comes back).
• - There is no parking for visitors (accessible parking is explained by email after you buy a ticket), and cars, taxis, motorbikes and bicycles are turned away, so come by train: Ogura Station on the Kintetsu (a private railway) Kyoto Line is about 20 minutes from Kyoto Station. Express trains skip it, so take a semi-express or local. The official guide gives a 5-minute walk from the east exit, and one family with elementary-school children took just under 10. Between the station's west and east gates the only link is a stairs-only passage, so follow the blue detour on the official map with a stroller.
• - Children 3 and over who are not yet in school get an experience card in place of an entry pass (four cards, one experience each). If a parent plays together with a child, the parent's coins are used; each pass holds only 10 coins, which will not cover every exhibit and are valid for the day. For children under 3, check each experience's conditions beforehand. Some exhibits are hard for short children to see or operate, and Zapper & Scope SP is one player per booth, though a parent may step in with a child.
• - Play the first-floor hands-on exhibits first and see the second-floor displays afterward (a guide inside the museum also advised going to the experience area first, and the first and second floors connect), because the hands-on area gets crowded as the afternoon goes on. The café expects a crowd from about 12:00 to 15:00 and cannot take seat reservations.
• - Strollers are allowed inside, and the first building's second-floor displays can be seen from the stroller. At the first-floor hands-on exhibits, though, you leave yours at the stroller area near them, and the aisles are narrow around the souvenir corner and the booths. The private nursing rooms (first floor of the first and third buildings, with hot water for formula) are outside the exhibit gate; you can go back into the exhibits afterward, but leaving the facility itself means you cannot return. One visitor found the room full after a single party went in and waited 20 to 30 minutes, with about three parties lined up near closing, so do not leave it until late.
• - Outside food is not allowed, except baby food, snacks for small children and food for people with allergies. Drinks in plastic bottles or flasks may come in, but cans and glass bottles may not, and inside you drink only at the spots set aside for it (one visitor was asked to drink standing by the vending machines); the second-floor display rooms allow no drinking at all.