Ota Memorial Museum of Art

Hidden a few steps off the busy fashion streets of the Harajuku district, this small museum holds one of Japan's finest private collections of ukiyo-e woodblock prints, assembled over a lifetime by a businessman determined to keep the works in the country. Rotating exhibitions draw on thousands of prints by the great masters of the floating world, from actors and courtesans to landscapes and ghost stories. Visitors remove their shoes to walk past intimate displays, making it a quiet, contemplative counterpoint to the crowds outside.