I'm a huge fan of Japanese history, so had high expectations for this museum. However, I found it a bit disappointing. The reconstructed Edo era village was certainly impressive - but why keep it inside a building ? Seems obvious it should be an outdoors museum? Also, there weren't many explanations in English.

Still interesting - but I would recommend the much better Tokyo Edo museum.

We loved the reproduction of a little village in this museum. The space is small but my two little kids had a great time pretending to be villagers. A guide walked us around (and explained everything in English). We loved the one on one attention. She was very nice and thorough in making sure we understood how set-ups. Our kids roamed around pretty freely here - although there is some sensitivity to make sure that items are not broken so they did asked them to be careful with playing around. All in all - it was great and a wonderful treat in this area.

We went back in time to the days of Edo when we visited the Fukugawa Edo Museum. This is a community culture centre that was established in 1986 and has an Edo period display of reconstructed houses, shops and other buildings to recreate a small section of the old city.
Amongst the buildings are a fish-oil and fertiliser wholesaler, a vegetable seller, a rice seller, a boathouse, a fire watchtower, a tea shop, and a row house (a house with divided sections for individual families), all authentically reproduced and filled with everyday items.
The city section also includes animals and plants, as well as lighting and sound effects that change according to day and night as well as the seasons. With all these features it felt quite realistic and about the only thing we could see missing from the ensemble (apart from actual inhabitants) was mud in the streets.
Other than an English language leaflet with a map of the town and the major features and some information on them, all the remaining information was in Japanese. However, there were several guide-staff available who wandered around and happily provided additional information for visitors, and they spoke English in varying degrees. We talked with two of them for some time, including at one point a discussion on the best words for 'poo' with regards to humans and animals. We're sure that while we were getting answers to our questions they were enjoying practising their English language skills, so everyone was happy.
We thoroughly enjoyed the Fukugawa Edo Museum and in all honesty think that this museum did the reproduction of Edo better than the Edo-Tokyo Museum we had visited previously. This is mainly because although the Edo-Tokyo Museum did have some similar buildings they were just individual examples rather than having been integrated into a larger reproduction of how the city used to be.
A great experience and one of the best museums we've been to here so far.