Ninja Trick House in Tokyo

The Ninja Trick House occupies one floor of a building in Kabukicho, in Shinjuku. It is small, and what it offers is not a museum of ninja things but about forty minutes of doing them.
The visit has three parts. Visitors throw shuriken at a board of targets. The shuriken are iron, not toys, and they stick where they land. They wear a wooden sword at the waist and are taught to draw it from the scabbard and to handle it, then strike a dummy with it. A member of staff then goes through the weapons the ninja used and demonstrates them, and shows the tricks built into the rooms — the hidden doors and turning walls that give the place its Japanese name, a house of contrivances.

Photography is allowed throughout, which is part of the point: much of what people take away is the film of themselves doing it.

The explanation is given by an animation that runs in seventeen languages. The staff then guide the session. Very little Japanese is needed.

The house opened in 2016 and has been busy with visitors from abroad ever since. Most people book and pay before they come, and those with bookings are taken first, so arriving without one is a risk when the place is full.

The building has no lift, and the house is on the fourth floor.