Best Museums around Tokyo and Surroundings Spot List

A thought-provoking museum about the history, culture and social role of currency.

A hall that holds rakugo (comic storytelling) performances throughout the year. It also holds a variety of other performances, such as manzai (a two-man comedy act), that are worth seeing.

Hakone Garasunomori Museum, or the Venetian Glass Museum in Hakone, is the first museum of this kind in Japan. The glass exhibitions that change each season are worth seeing.

The Tokyo Station Gallery is a museum located in an Important Cultural Property, Tokyo Station Marunouchi Building. Exhibitions and events in a variety of themes are held there.

This museum owns over 38,000 artifacts relating to the culture and history of tobacco and salt both from Japan and overseas.

This is Japan's only national art museum, where you can view various Western artworks, including the Matsukata collection, which mainly consists of French artworks.

A technology gallery where you can experience Japanese high technology by looking, touching and operating. A guided tour is available, as well.

A place connected to Matsuo Basho. A garden with flowers and trees associated with his haiku and Shiseki Tembo Teien with a waterside view are the highlights.

Directly connected to Mitsukoshimae Station, the Mitsui Memorial Museum features masterpieces of Japanese and Eastern art acquired by members of the Mitsui family over 350 years. There is no permanent exhibition.

The Yokohama Archives of History is situated near Kaiko Plaza Park, where the Kanagawa Convention or the US-Japan Peace and Amity Treaty was signed. It is a house of archives where you can learn about the history of Yokohama City.

A facility where you can experience the nature and history of remote wilderness of Oku-Nikko

The Suntory Museum of Art is directly connected with Roppongi Station and inside Tokyo Midtown — a chic integrated complex where you can enjoy shopping.

It is an art museum in Marunouchi that holds Japanese contemporary art oriented exhibitions.

The Higashi-yamato Municipal Folk Museum has ”the Sayama Hills and life” as its theme. The museum has a planetarium equipped with a Megastar projector, which casts images of stars.

A museum were you can enjoy the modern works painted by the illustrators such as Takabatake Kasho who swept through the art publication world.

Amuse Museum is an art complex where a museum of the textile culture and ukiyoe (paintings of everyday life in the Edo period 1603 – 1868), a select shop of Japanese-style products, and an event hall are combined.

A museum specializing in Japanese swords. Some 190 items including swords, mountings and fittings, armor, and information on metalwork.

This is an art museum that houses and exhibits modern and contemporary Japanese art. It hosts special exhibitions on a wide range of themes.

A museum specializing in nihonga (Japanese paintings) with a collection of about 1,800 works consisting mainly of modern and contemporary Japanese paintings. It holds various special exhibitions as well.

This is a grand-scale building that stands on a corner of the land where the Sakura Castle used to be. The museum's exhibition is presented so that visitors can easily understand Japanese history.