MOA Museum of Art

The visit starts with a climb that nobody has to walk. From the entrance, seven escalators carry you about 200 meters through the hillside and roughly 60 meters up, past a round hall about 20 meters across. At the top the windows face Sagami Bay. The museum opened in 1982 to show the collection of its founder, Okada Mokichi (1882 to 1955), and the galleries were redone by the artist Hiroshi Sugimoto and architect Tomoyuki Sakakida before reopening in February 2017. Of about 3,500 works, three are National Treasures, and the one people come for is Ogata Korin's Red and White Plum Blossoms, two folding screens with a dark stylized stream between a red and a white tree. Japanese paintings are shown for short spells to protect them, and this one comes out once a year, in a show of the museum's best pieces timed to the plum garden next door, usually for a few weeks somewhere between late January and mid-March. Outside that window you will see other things. There is also a full-size reconstruction of Toyotomi Hideyoshi's Golden Tea Room, a Noh stage and a tea garden. Admission is 2,000 yen, steep for a single visit, and the museum shuts on Thursdays.