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Comment by qiqitori | Hacker News Reader

This feels like a shameless plug, sorry. I sometimes do volunteer work at a (mostly personal) computer museum in Tokyo. https://www.dream-library.org/museum/index.html

If anyone nearby is reading this, please consider coming by sometime :)

(You need a reservation. Not everything works. In fact most machines don't work probably. It's not super fancy like the Living Computer Museum was. There's a lot of stuff on the floor. It'll probably move to a bigger place soon so that'll get better probably. It's not particularly cheap; there's a yearly fee (no auto-renewals) and a per-visit fee. There's probably almost nothing to do if you aren't fluent in Japanese.)

So far I fixed: ZX81, VIC-20, PET 2001, various MSX machines. (See my blog for details :p)

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Those in Europe, or better in England, may pop into the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge: http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/

Nice place, I like it. A favourite of mine is the wall sized CPU, The Megaprocessor. https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/43063/The-Megaproces...

They will have a Made in Japan season this spring! : ) http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/70465/Made-in-Japan-S...

While we're plugging computer museums, I'll add the Media Archaeology Lab in Boulder, on the campus of the University of Colorado. It's no doubt a far smaller operation than most of the others mentioned here, but it has a lot of heart. Visitors are encouraged to hang out, play around with all the old computers and gadgets, peruse the floppy disk collection, and maybe find some games to play.

https://www.mediaarchaeologylab.com/

In Switzerland I recommend checking out the ENTER museum in Solothurn

https://enter.ch/?lang=en

Nice! Looks like something requiring a whole day or more.

> [...] computer museum in Tokyo.

I looked up the address, and just want to clarify for anyone who may want to visit: the museum is in Oume City, about 1.5 hours away by train from Tokyo Station. While technically part of Tokyo Metro area, I think for most foreign tourists "Tokyo" only refers the 23 special wards[0]. So just beware it's not just a short hop away after you're done sight-seeing in e.g. Asakusa.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_wards_of_Tokyo

Narita (New Tokyo Airport) is exactly the same distance away, in the exact opposite direction.

And it takes an hour to get to Narita from Tokyo Station

It's pretty normal for the airport of a major city to be well outside of those major cities, given how air travel and tall buildings and large swaths of empty land for runways and population density don't exactly play well together. It's not usually that big a deal - for one thing, because you're likely to only do one leg of that journey on any given day; for another, because there's usually lots of good, tourist-friendly transit options to get from the airport to downtown.

So tourists are accustomed to this sort of thing, whereas - as pointed out above - they're not exactly accustomed to going that far out of the city while sightseeing "in the city".

I'm planning my next trip to Tokyo and got real excited reading about a Japanese computer museum (I'd love to get to play with some vintage Japanese micros, seeing how different they were from Western machines) but I don't know if I'd be willing to take three hours out of my vacation to go out to the suburbs and back...

The Oakland MADE museum is also a more humbly funded institution, which I believe is still open for anyone in the Bay Area.

https://www.themade.org/

Japanese internet is, in fact, a Living Web 1.0 Museum. :V

Seriously though, I love that the wider Japanese internet has remained so simple (and thus usable!) after so many years.

My goodness, a Heathkit H-8 in the second photo. I am very surprised to see that in Japan.

I’ll be in Tokyo early next month with work, and this sounds like something I’d enjoy. Is it worth going as someone who doesn’t speak much Japanese? If so, I’ll get myself there :)

> There's probably almost nothing to do if you aren't fluent in Japanese.

Not even remotely true

Not having much to do isn’t very related to whether a visit is worth it just to see the collection, but I take your point I could have been clearer.

Hmm, well, I think it wouldn't be easy to make a reservation without being able to read and write Japanese.

Actually TBH I don't know if the owner can speak English :c Normally, first-time visitors are given a quick tour so they can decide whether to become a supporting member or not. I'm not sure how the owner would do that. (Maybe he would ask me to translate? I'd probably do it :p)

I can write/speak enough to make a booking for myself but if there would be alot of complex written stuff like histories and things maybe not for me. Thanks for letting me know :)

Just added it to my list. Might be a while - I live in Ireland - but who knows… a couple years back I was prospected to join Toyota’s “city of the future” project…

Going to Tokyo this spring.. but if not this time, then I'll definitely go there later.

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