Best museums in Tokyo

1. Tokyo National Museum

Japan's oldest and largest museum holds over 100,000 objects and nearly a hundred National Treasures, roughly 4,000 on display at once across six buildings. Trying to see all six is the standard mistake. Walk the Honkan highlights route for armour, swords, prints and Buddhist sculpture, then cross to the Gallery of Horyuji Treasures, a hushed pavilion of 7th-century gilt-bronze Buddhas.

• Getting there: JR Ueno Station, Park Exit, 10 minutes on foot.
• Opening hours: 9:30-17:00, until 20:00 Friday and Saturday; closed Monday, or the next day when Monday is a holiday.
• Budget: ¥1,000 regular exhibitions, ¥500 students, free under 18; two hours.

Go if you want the whole span of Japanese art in one visit. Skip it if large collections tire you out.

2. Nezu Museum

The National Treasures are not the whole draw, though painter Ogata Korin's Irises screens are among them. A building by architect Kengo Kuma with a bamboo-lined approach opens onto a 17,000 square metre hillside garden of ponds, stone lanterns and four tea houses. Two streets from the Omotesando boutiques, it feels an hour out of the city. Garden, cafe and shop are reachable only with a museum ticket.

• Getting there: Omotesando Station, Exit A5, 8 minutes on foot.
• Crowd warning: the Irises screens hang for a few weeks from late April, and draw queues; other months the galleries are near empty. Closed Monday, or the Tuesday after a holiday Monday.
• Budget: ¥1,400 timed entry online, from ¥1,600 for special exhibitions, ¥600 students.

Go if you want art and a garden on one ticket. Skip it if you came for contemporary work.

3. teamLab Borderless

The Odaiba original closed, and this Azabudai Hills basement has been the permanent home since February 2024. Artworks wander out of one room into the next, so the same ticket never produces the same walk twice, and a light-sculpture series arrived in 2026. It drew 1.69 million visitors in 2025, which is the problem as much as the appeal.

• Getting there: Kamiyacho Station, Hibiya Line Exit 5, 2 minutes; Roppongi-itchome 6.
• Opening hours: usually 8:30-21:00, some days to 22:00, last entry an hour before; closed days are irregular and published monthly.
• Budget: from ¥3,600, dynamic pricing, ¥200 more on site; dated tickets, no refunds, date changes allowed.

Go if you booked ahead. Skip it if you want the effect without the crowd: the Yayoi Kusama Museum at number 8 caps every slot and charges ¥1,100.

4. Ota Memorial Museum of Art

More than 10,000 woodblock prints sit one street behind Takeshita-dori, and the entire show changes every month. Galleries are small and tatami-floored in places, so you stand a hand's width from Hokusai and Kuniyoshi originals rather than three rows back. It is the easiest place in the city to see ukiyo-e without a national-museum queue.

• Getting there: Meiji-jingumae Station, Exit 5, 3 minutes; JR Harajuku 5 minutes.
• Opening hours: 10:30-17:30, entry until 17:00; closed Monday and for several days at the end of most months, while the show is changed.
• Budget: ¥800 to ¥1,200 depending on the exhibition, free under 15, cash only.

Go if prints are on your list. Skip it if you are walking over in the last week of a month without checking the calendar.

5. Edo-Tokyo Museum

Shut in April 2022 and reopened on 31 March 2026 after its first large-scale renovation since 1993, so any guide still calling it closed is out of date. You cross a full-scale replica of Nihonbashi bridge into an Edo townscape, now with more stalls in it and ceiling screens projecting Edo skies. Nothing else explains as clearly how a fishing village became this city.

• Getting there: Ryogoku Station, Toei Oedo Exit A3 or A4, one minute; JR Sobu West Exit three.
• Crowd warning: the reopening is recent and weekends are busy; a weekday morning or the Saturday opening to 19:30 is calmer. Closed Monday, or the next weekday after a holiday.
• Budget: ¥800 adults, ¥480 university students, ¥400 for 65+, free for junior high and under.

Go if you want the history of Tokyo before you walk more of it. Skip it if you would rather stand inside real buildings, in which case take number 10.

6. Sumida Hokusai Museum

Hokusai was born in this neighbourhood and spent most of his life in it, which is why a mirrored aluminium block by Pritzker winner Kazuyo Sejima stands here. The permanent room follows his career and includes a life-size recreation of the artist at work in his cluttered studio. Its account of how a woodblock print was actually made is the clearest in Tokyo.

• Getting there: Ryogoku Station, 5 to 10 minutes on foot, and 10 minutes from the Edo-Tokyo Museum.
• Opening hours: 9:30-17:30, entry until 17:00; closed Monday, or the next day when Monday is a holiday.
• Budget: ¥400 for the permanent gallery, special exhibitions on top; 45 minutes.

Go if you are already in Ryogoku. Skip it if you have one specific print in mind, since originals rotate out for light protection.

7. Mori Art Museum

Fifty-three floors up, open until 22:00 most nights, which no other major museum in the city manages. There is no permanent collection, so a visit is whatever single large show is running; through 2026 that is sculptor Ron Mueck, past 200,000 visitors by July. It closes for renovation from autumn 2027, so the window is short.

• Getting there: Roppongi Station, Hibiya Line Exit 1C, 3 minutes via the concourse.
• Opening hours: 10:00-22:00, last entry 21:30, but only 10:00-17:00 on Tuesday; no weekly closing day.
• Budget: ¥2,100 weekday online, ¥2,300 weekends, ¥200 more at the desk; the observation deck is separate.

Go if you want serious contemporary art after dinner. Skip it if you expect a permanent collection, or the view in the price.

8. Yayoi Kusama Museum

Kusama opened her own five-storey museum on a residential Shinjuku street in 2017 and capped it deliberately: four days a week, six slots a day, ninety minutes each. That is why the top-floor Infinity Mirror Room and the rooftop pumpkin never feel mobbed, and why the ticket is hard to get. Per yen, it is the best contemporary art in the city.

• Getting there: Ushigome-yanagicho, Toei Oedo Line, 6 minutes; Waseda Exit 1, 7 minutes.
• Opening hours: 11:00-17:30, Thursday to Sunday and national holidays only; closed Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
• Budget: ¥1,100 adults, ¥600 ages 6 to 18; museum website only, 10:00 JST on the 1st, two months ahead.

Go if you plan two months out. Skip it if you are already in Tokyo without a ticket, because nothing is sold at the door.

9. Intermediatheque

Two floors of the old Central Post Office, one minute from Tokyo Station, hold 150 years of University of Tokyo specimens in their original wooden cases: whale and giraffe skeletons, taxidermy birds, antique instruments. It is staged closer to a Victorian cabinet of curiosities than a science centre. Admission is free and there is no ticket desk, so the shoppers in the KITTE building above rarely find it.

• Getting there: Tokyo Station, Marunouchi South Exit, one minute; Nijubashimae Exit 4, two.
• Opening hours: 11:00-18:00, until 20:00 Friday and Saturday; closed Monday, or the following Tuesday after a holiday.
• Budget: free; an hour is plenty, and photography is banned in most galleries.

Go if you have a gap between trains in Marunouchi. Skip it if you want full captions, because the labelling is thin.

10. Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum

About thirty buildings rescued from demolition across the city and rebuilt inside a park in Koganei, every one of them walk-in: thatched farmhouses, a politician's residence, a 1929 public bathhouse. The east zone is a reconstructed Showa shopping street with a soy sauce merchant, a stationery store and a tin-fronted police box. For ¥400 you get the interiors Tokyo itself bulldozed, twenty-five minutes west of Shinjuku.

• Getting there: JR Musashi-Koganei or Seibu Hana-Koganei, then a 5 to 10 minute bus.
• Opening hours: 9:30-17:30 April to September, 9:30-16:30 October to March; closed Monday, or the next day after a holiday.
• Budget: ¥400 adults, ¥200 high school and 65+, free junior high and under; allow 2-3 hours.

Go if you missed the Ghibli Museum release and still want a Showa streetscape. Skip it if you have under half a day left.

11. Meguro Parasitological Museum

A private research institute from 1953, said to be the only museum in the world devoted to parasites, on a residential street with no ticket desk. Two small floors hold around 300 preserved specimens, among them an 8.8 metre tapeworm with a tape measure laid beside it. The life-cycle displays use real material, so it informs more than it shocks.

• Getting there: Meguro Station, West Exit, about 12 minutes along Meguro-dori.
• Opening hours: 10:00-17:00; closed Monday and Tuesday, unlike almost everything else here, and the following weekday after a holiday.
• Budget: free, with a donation box worth using; 30 minutes, and no cafe.

Go if you want thirty strange minutes and a souvenir nobody else brought home. Skip it if you are squeamish.