Osaka Science Museum

For decades now, Japan has enjoyed the reputation as a world leader in science and technology. Few places in the country better demonstrate this proud recent history than the Osaka Science Museum, home to Japan’s first, and largest Planetarium.

Located close the riverside Nakashima district, Osaka Science Museum is a short 10-15 minute walk from JR Osaka Station in the Umeda office district.

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The Museum was opened in 1989 and is housed within the same building as what was formerly known as the Osaka City Electric Science Museum, which was Japan’s first museum of science when it was opened back in 1937.

The City partnered with local utility company Kansai Electric for the museum’s 1989 re-launch, which was timed to coincide with the 100 year anniversary of the official founding of Osaka City.

Today, the museum spans across four floors and has more than 200 individual exhibition items.

Today, the museum spans across four floors and has more than 200 individual exhibition items.

There are various demonstrations and scientific sideshows going on throughout the day. However, separate from the primary exhibition area is what is, in my opinion, the highlight of the museum, its planetarium. The planetarium’s main dome has a radius of almost 27 meters, making it the largest in Japan and the seventh largest in the world.

Since it was given a full digital overhaul in 2004, the planetarium is now also firmly established as the most advanced and immersive planetarium of its kind in Japan too. The museum has played host to many famous and successful scientific luminaries down the years.

Perhaps the most famous among these is the physicist and Nobel Laureate Hideki Yukawa. Much of the work leading towards his theory on mesons, for which he received his Nobel Prize, was conducted at the museum, back when it was an annex of Osaka University.

If you’re a bookworm, then you’ll also feel right at home here, too. The museum and planetarium plays host to the largest freely browsable collection of scientific magazines books and journals in Western Japan.

From samurai to parasites, in Japan, there’s a museum for seemingly everything.