Budleigh Salterton circa 1957?

It was Tokyo’s Narita airport that did it. Polluting all the hi-tech wizardry that you would expect were rather naff signs handwritten on tatty A4 paper saying things like ‘non Japanese citezins (sic) this way’.

The staff at the National Science Museum further lowered my aesthetic expectations. The ‘researchers’ sheltered with their collections ten miles away and there were as many education and design departments as members of the Iraqi George Bush Appreciation Society. The entrance to the museum also seemed to suggest I was about to experience the design values of Budleigh Salterton Museum circa 1957.

But initial appearances can be misleading. I was confronted with stunning collections beautifully and imaginatively displayed. The current blockbuster is the Mummy exhibition, from the British Museum.

The museum, the equivalent of our Science Museum, Natural History Museum and Kew Gardens all rolled into one, manages to cover all aspects of science despite limited space, and is one of the national museums of Japan that operates under the same sort of governance as the UK national museums – nominally independent under the watching and interfering eye of the Department of Culture.

Japan has a cultural agency unlike the English MLA or Arts Council. The director general of the National Science Museum is the former head of the agency. So how would, say, the Science Museum or the Tate feel about our equivalents – Chris Batt and Peter Hewitt - taking the reins? Answers on a post card please...