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Run by cigarette conglomerate Japan Tobacco, this oddly specialized museum focuses on the history of tobacco use around the world and the history of the Japanese salt industry. Graphic design historians can draw inspiration from a huge wall display showing the evolution of Japanese tobacco advertising over the past century and a half, as well as scrapbooks filled with hundreds of cigarette packages from around the world.
Other highlights include Mayan relief carvings; big collections of snuff bottles, pipes and ukiyoe prints; and life-size recreations of a tobacconist and tobacco pouch shop from the Edo era as well as a a Showa-era cigarette kiosk.
The salt section on the museum's second floor will teach you everything you need to know about salt lakes, the importance of salt to the animal kingdom, and Japanese salt-mining techniques through the ages. There are also temporary exhibit areas where you might find anything from photographs of the Peruvian Andes to ornate ashtrays from around the world.
The ground-floor museum shop has a surpringly diverse stock of books, tobacco pipes, and artisanal salts from different parts of Japan. The facility is located near Tokyo Skytree, where it opened in April 2015.
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