The brainchild of famed scientist Frank Oppenheimer who served as its first executive director, the Exploratorium is his dream of a hands-on museum that makes science fun, cool and accessible even to the youngest of children. It took Japan about ten years to catch on to this concept. But with so many world-class high-tech manufacturers, there are perhaps more fascinating science museums in Tokyo than any other city in the world. While most are family-friendly and offer science workshops for older children, increasingly these spaces cater to a grown-up market as well.

The dim lighting of the Sony and Panasonic museums prevents them from ever seeming like elementary school classrooms no matter how many kids are running around. Rather, they feel futuristic and, somehow, a bit romantic. Museums in the Odaiba entertainment mecca are extremely popular with young couples cozying up while watching a planetarium show or giggling over silly optical illusions. At the Miraikan, serious-looking senior men linger at displays for a long time − without a doubt, retired engineers. Indeed, mature visitors travel from all over Japan to attend the weekend workshops and lectures at the Miraikan. Whether you are a bona fide techno-geek or just someone wanting to do something unique to Tokyo, visiting a science museum will make you wonder why you avoided Physics 101 back in school.

It’s not everyday that science buffs are allowed to perform experiments with winners of the Nobel prize in Chemistry, but on one Saturday in March, forty lucky participants learned how to make plastic conductive polymers designed support the flow of electricity from Dr. Hideki Shirakawa. But even without attending the workshop, Miraikan, the National Science Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, is arguably Tokyo’s most grown-up and sophisticated science museum. The museum has four permanent exhibition zones. One is known as the Innovation and the Future area, which includes extensive displays of robotics such as the Paro, the furry seal created as a “therapeutic robot,” and the real-life rescue robots.

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