Adventure #2 in Tokyo! This trip to Tokyo kind of snuck up on me. Between work, side jobs, and just social things, I didn’t have much planned for my trip to Tokyo. All of my research was done the weekend before (aka like 3 days before my trip). However, one thing I did have planned was this: tickets to go to teamLab Borderless. Once I saw pictures from people who’ve been there, I knew I needed to go. We were in Tokyo from Friday to Monday, but Friday and Monday were half days (either arriving/leaving), so I booked the tickets for Saturday. I read that weekdays were better and less crowded, but I didn’t want to rush our time there so I settled for Saturday tickets. For the both of us it was 6400 YEN (about 30.33 USD per person).
The transport: The tickets are basically for the whole day, so you can arrive anytime, but I heard that it’s best to arrive as early as possible, again, to avoid the crowds. Fast forward to when we got there. It was pretty easy to navigate there. We were coming from Ginza station, so we took one stop to Shimbashi and then the Yurikamome line to the man-made island of Odaiba. We, like a lot of people, got off at Aomi station and you basically get directed to the VenusFort mall. I don’t know if there’s an official way to get to the front door of the teamLab Borderless exhibition, but we just happened to turn right, walk inside of an indoor car showcase area, go back outside right underneath the ferris wheel, and then to the exhibition. We got there as soon as it had opened, but there were a lot of people waiting too.
The wait: It wasn’t too bad; initially it seems bad because it doesn’t look like the line was moving at all. And in a way, this was true. It is because they let people go in in batches; we were probably batch #2 to go in. The ticketing system was pretty easy. After I bought my tickets, I got a QR code sent to me and you scan that when you enter. (I had a mini freakout before though because I forgot to save/screenshot the QR code and my internet would not work, so I definitely recommend you screenshot your QR code ticket beforehand!) The one thing I was honestly shocked about though, was the lack of security. Every other museum/exhibition I have gone to requires some sort of security check were you walk through a metal detector and some security guards checks your bag. But this place had no security. It was especially odd to me because the whole exhibition is in darkness. I feel like in darkness, crazy things can happen, so I don’t know why there was no security.
The exhibition’s navigation: passing the ticket check, the group of us stood in front of a black curtain. It seemed a bit ominous, but we only waited for a couple of minutes before being let in. From my reading of this place, they make it purposely windy (like curvy, not air blowing) so visitors wander around the whole exhibition. It’s kind of like the Ikea method put in a museum format. So on one had, I get it, but on the other it is extremely confusing to navigate around. When you pass the curtain, there are wall with arrows that say which way different parts of the exhibition is where, which is a plus. But after that, there are no signs anywhere! And it’s dark so, my gosh, were we lost! At the beginning it was all nice and fun because we kept on stumbling across a new part that was fun to explore, but once we accidentally found our way to the exit, which we didn’t want, and leaving was kinda anxiety-provoking. We really wanted to make this excursion last because this would be the only time we would go here for a while. We wanted to make sure we hit every nook and cranny and didn’t want to miss out on anything. Unless you do extensive research, there’s no way to know if you’ve hit every part of the museum. So in a sense, I wish there was a map or at least a little paper with checkmarks to each exhibit so you could know if you visited it or not. Towards the end, we just were walking around, double/triple-checking different pathways to see if there was something that we missed. And sure enough, we missed two things. To be honest neither of them were as interesting as the larger/main exhibits, but it would still be nice to know that they existed. And when I say we missed two things, this is also a guess; there could actually be more, but I had no way of knowing. I tried looking at their website, but even that doesn’t really disclose all the different things to explore (and in my opinion is really confusing by itself). I don’t know, maybe I missed something that they handed out, even though I didn’t see any one else holding anything, but it was extremely difficult to know where to go. It was incredibly cool, but if you’re someone that doesn’t like dark spaces with a slight feeling of being trapped, I could see this not suiting everybody.
The exhibitions: With the attractions. I’m actually going to rank them because if you are planning to go, you might want to know my list of ones to actually go to and maybe ones that are worth skipping or saving for last.
1) Forest of Lamps: extremely cool exhibit! This one probably has the longest line. It’s upstairs and you line up behind a one-way mirror. The line moved fairly fast; I believe we were the third group to go in from when we got in line. They also let people go in in batches, and unfortunately you only get probably somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes in the room. I suggest you get in there and just immediately start snapping away. Trying to find a spot where there is no people is nearly impossible (especially being inside a mirrored box). From all the social media pictures, the colors are always different. From my time in there it started as blue-tinted lights than shifted to a pinky/yellow color later.
2) Crystal World: Immediately when we go in here, I could hear my mom audibly say “wow!” And we went in at the best time; the lights constantly change, but when we got in the room it was bright blue/white lights. All of the color changes are breathtaking, but this particular light combination was, in my opinion, the best one to take pictures and just the prettiest one in general. All the other color combinations are incredibly difficult to photograph and all pictures of faces turn out in a black silhouette, but the bright blue/white one can subtly show people’s faces. I guess we arrived at the right time because the second time we went in we waited for a solid 15-20 minutes and we still didn’t even get the blue/white lights again. Something that I will say about this exhibit is that it’s extremely cool in person, but all the pictures I got, just don’t do the experience justice. A lot of the photos I got just don’t show how magical it was to be there. One shot that I think is particularly cool though is the the ground shot. The floors are mirrored so you can point your camera at the ground and get a pretty cool shot (one thing that is pretty common is mirrored floors so beware of any revealing skirts)
3) Memories of Topography: I think this is what it’s called… Unfortunately, this is a seasonal exhibit, but it was pretty cool. When you walk in, it kinda feels like a funhouse. You’re in a mirrored room with poles scattered around and at one corner the floor slopes up. When you get to the top of the slope you see a scattering of petal-like things. When you get in to the room you are essentially under all the petals and then you walk amongst all the petals. We were in here probably longer than the average person because we were waiting for the colors to change. They did slightly, but from our time, they were mainly green the whole time.
4) Athletic Forest: It seems like a lot of people really enjoyed the Athletic Forest, and if you read other reviews, I think this would be top 3 on their list. But for me, I found this part kinda ehh… The cool thing about the Athletic Forest is that it has a lot of different kid-friendly activities. So if you have kids, this would definitely be a go to. Maybe it’s because I’m older so I didn’t really partake in all the activities. We you walk in there are slides and a trampoline. Exploring more, there’s a few kid “play pen” type things, a couple of drawing sections, a section with colored balloons (pictured above), stilted light-up poles that you can walk amongst, and a swing/net thing you can walk around in. The floors are all ramped in different places to give it a little bit of intrigue.
5) (Light show room): I don’t know the official name, but this is one part that we could’ve completely missed; luckily we randomly stumbled across this one. When we got in there, there were colored lights shining all over the room. But I guess we caught the end, because it went dark and for the rest of the time in there (around 15-20 minutes), it was just white lights. Reading the sign before entering, it said that you can interact with the cross-section of the lights, but when we got the opportunity to touch the intersection, nothing happened, it was as expected, lights just shining so I don’t know what’s up there… I guess it was kinda cool, but nothing absolutely breath-taking.
6) (Colorful area with hill + standing mirrors): I feel like this is the main section. At least this was the section that I saw the most people. Everyone was scattered around, taking pictures, touching the walls, crawling up the big hill. The standing mirrors are right next door, and a lot of people hang around there as well
8) Floating Nest: We found this place towards the end (another exhibit which we almost missed if we hadn’t gone back and tried searching every part of the exhibition. This was alright, but honestly a miss in my opinion. We waited for quite a long while and when we got in, there a next which you can lie down on. On the walls, they project lights. I tried to snap a couple of pictures, but sadly I have none to show, my camera just showed black; it just doesn’t photograph that well and it wasn’t just my camera. My mom, who has a much better camera that does well in low light, didn’t get anything either. It also wasn’t that spectacular, so we just left mid-way through.
Honestly, there were a couple of other things, but I don’t know the name of them. There’s a room of animal-hologram-things playing music which honestly was kinda freaky. Another part was like a light show that supposedly changed scenes when you interacted with it, but it blocked off people, so I didn’t understand the purpose of saying that you could interact with it. And one more room that’s circular with bean bags and waves of light. I’m fairly certain that there is one part that I missed too; from the website, it looks like some sort of room where you are immersed in the artwork kinda like you are walking in space amongst the art.
The verdict: The exhibition was extremely cool for the things they advertise most: the mirrored room with infinite lamps and the mirrored room with crystal lights dangling down all around. But honestly all the other exhibits felt kinda mediocre. They were kinda cool, but it was not as breathtaking as I would have wished. A big part of why I’m docking points from the experience was navigating around the exhibition. It was extremely confusing: I didn’t know where I was going and I didn’t know if I visited everything teamLab Borderless had to offer. Two weeks has passed and I’m still wondering if I might have missed something spectacular. I think that they should implement some sort of visitor checklist to make sure you’ve visited all the exhibits (especially for people like me who, with a 10+ hour flight to Tokyo, probably won’t visit that often), better signage, and a clearer website. The 30 dollar price tag seems pretty comparable, but I would’ve liked it to be somewhere closer to 25 dollars.
katatries 