When it comes to the world's weirdest museums, Japan takes the lead with this loving monument to ramen. Here, noodle history comes alive in displays of vintage packages, chopsticks and bowls, a reconstruction of the first ramen dish (reportedly invented by a 17th-century samurai) and a ramen-flavored historical theme park set in a painstakingly reconstructed 1958 version of small Tokyo neighborhood where ramen was just starting to gain in popularity.

Dedicated to study of hidden or unknown animals, this Portland, Maine, museum is perplexing and fascinating. Founded in 2003 by cryptozoology expert Loren Coleman, the museum features an eight-foot-tall, 500-pound Bigfoot statue, among other zoological oddities. The museum, open by appointment only, is currently located in Coleman's home—so dropping him a line before showing up is advised.

The Kentucky museum is the world's only museum dedicated to the art of ventriloquism. Hundreds of dummies that once entertained (and maybe terrified) children have been donated to the museum. The museum is open by appointment only from May to September, and museum officials assure us that none of the collections have ever come to life, Twilight Zone-style.

The Mutter Museum, part of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, was founded in the 1850s to teach doctors about anatomy and medical anomalies. Today, thousands of visitors are drawn to its weird and yet scientifically significant collection every year. There are abnormal skeletons, photographs of malformed people, and several dozen brains from several dozen species, even the "Secret Tumor of Grover Cleveland." Don't miss the Big Colon—which is exactly what it sounds like.

David Wilson received a "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation in 2003 for his work as curator of the Museum of Jurassic Technologies. His genius is a very specialized one. The museum's collections range from the fictional to the absurd, celebrating the inspirational potential of confusion. The permanent collections include the "Garden of Eden On Wheels," devoted to trailer park culture, and paintings drawn on heads of pins, viewed through microscopes.

If not for marijuana's complex legal status or psychotropic effects, the Hash Museum might be in danger of being a dull agricultural history museum. Located in famed Amsterdam's red light district, the museum presents the history of marijuana, including its cultivation and legal history. Also, it may be the world's only museum selling marijuana seeds at its gift shop. Take that, Guggenheim!

Too much beauty can become a burden after a while. The dozens of failed attempts at creating beauty on display at the Massachusetts Museum of Bad Art can free you from it. Rescued from the trash or culled from estate sales, the hung art is sometimes tacky, sometimes ugly and often hilarious.
* Reprinted from Museum of Bad Art: Masterworks by Michael Frank and Louise Reilly  Sacco. Photography by Mark Richards.

In the late '60s George Glore, an official at a Missouri state insane asylum, started building replicas of out-of-date devices used to treat mental illness. By the time the museum opened a few years later, the collection included a variety of art created by patients, plus scary old devices and equipment dating back as far as the 16th century.

Equally cute and bizarre, the Teddy Bear Museum in South Korea offers an exhaustive collection of the stuffed animals in strangely life-like scenes. Fashion model bears walk down miniature catwalks; artistic bears re-enact the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Bears over six-feet-tall compete for visitor's interest with bears small enough to require magnifying glasses for viewing. The Hawaii-like Jeju Island, incidentally, is popular with young Korean newlyweds, who often dress identically during their honeymoons—making this museum an even weirder place to visit.

The commonplace miracle of indoor plumbing gets its due tribute at the Museum of Toilets, founded by sanitation "crusader" Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak. The museum tells the history of toilets—from chamber pots to futuristic microwave flushers—and even includes a replica of King Louis XVIII of France's ornate "throne" and a facility that folds into a bookcase when not in use.

According to a March, 2008 Reuters article, Sigurdur Hjartarson, the founder and owner of the Icelandic Phallological Museum, doesn't have a human penis in his collection. He does, however, have a sperm whale's, a hamster's, a bull's and nearly 250 more. In fact, Hjartarson's museum includes a display for every Icelandic animal—and their reproductive organs, of course.