Things to do in Tokyo this week

Celebrated in Tokyo since the latter part of the Edo era, the Tori no Ichi festival is a sure sign that winter is just around the corner. Observed in order to pray for wealth and good fortune for the year ahead, it is held every November on the days of the rooster (tori, one of the twelve signs of the Chinese zodiac). There are usually two or three of these days in a typical year. In 2023, it’s on November 11 and 23.

Said to have originated at Asakusa's Otori Shrine and the nearby Juzaisan Chokokuji temple, the festival is now held at rooster-related shrines and temples all over Tokyo. These are our picks of the most visit-worthy Tori no Ichi events in the capital, all of which have a warm atmosphere and countless stalls selling traditional kumade (a colourfully decorated, traditional bamboo rake), which are an essential part of any Tori no Ichi celebration.

Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden is scenic year-round, but there are few better times to visit than in autumn at the height of the beautiful seasonal foliage. While the garden is usually only open during the day, the fall season will see a limited number of evening openings, during which you can admire lit-up red, orange and yellow maple leaves plus projection mapping displays by digital art collective Naked Inc.

The park’s avenue lined with 200-metre-tall London plane trees will be illuminated in champagne gold, while the maple hill area will have intricate laser and gradient lights to make it seem like the trees are swaying. Don’t miss the autumnal projection mapping at the Middle Pond, showing images of maple and ginkgo leaves falling. 

There will be food trucks around, serving vegan sweets, drinks and booze to keep you in high spirits. Just don’t forget to borrow a lantern for free at the entrance if you’re looking to take photos in the dark. 

While tickets can be purchased on the day, we recommend booking in advance to avoid long queues. You can secure a ticket now for ¥2,000 (day of ¥2,200) for openings between Monday and Thursday, or ¥2,200 (¥2,600) for entry on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and holidays.

Mt Takao is one of the best locations in Tokyo to see autumn leaves. And one of the best ways to do that is by taking the scenic cable car ride, which brings you closer to the mountain’s Yakuoin temple. Here you can sample shojin ryori, a traditional Japanese Buddhist vegetarian meal. The seasonal Momiji-zen (¥2,900) includes a variety of small dishes made with ingredients typical of autumn. It’s served on weekdays between 11am and 2pm until December 9.

Throughout the duration of the festival, you can also look forward to a host of free events at Kiyotaki Station, the cable car stop at the base of Mt Takao, including musical and dance performances by local university students. Check the website for the schedule.

As it’s the case every year, the base of Mt Takao will be crowded in autumn, so it’s best to arrive via public transport.

Rikugien is one of the best gardens in Tokyo to immerse yourself in beautiful Japanese landscapes. There’s no bad time to see the garden, but we do admit it’s especially picturesque in autumn, when the leaves take on vibrant shades of red and yellow.

From November 22 to December 3, Rikugien stays open until 8.30pm for its annual light-up. The trees in the garden are bathed in golden lights so that the brilliant colours of the changing leaves stand out even more, providing stunning views.

Aside from admiring the autumn foliage, don’t forget to drop by the garden’s dozo (storehouse). Its earthen walls serve as the canvas for a beautiful projection show between 6pm and 8.30pm. 

We recommend purchasing tickets online in advance, since tickets are limited and offered at a discounted price of ¥900. Otherwise, you can purchase tickets for ¥1,100 at the door.

Showa Kinen Park is the most beautiful in autumn, with the maple and ginkgo trees blushing in fiery red and yellow. The Ginkgo trees are the first to turn and you can see two boulevards of the golden yellow trees as soon as you enter the park’s Tachikawa gate. The momiji and kaede trees, however, present their signature vermillion hues a bit later towards the end of November.

During this season, the park stays open after dark, with special light-ups taking place at the Gingko Tree Avenue (near the futsal and basketball courts) and the traditional Japanese Garden from 4.30pm until 8.30pm.

While you can enjoy the light-ups at the Gingko Tree Avenue with just the park's regular admission fee (¥450, free for junior high school students and younger), you need an extra ticket to enter the Japanese Garden (advance ticket ¥1,100, primary and junior high school students ¥600; same-day tickets sold at Komorebi House close to the Japanese Garden ¥1,300, ¥700). However, between October 28 and November 2, you can enter the Japanese Garden with just the park's regular admission fee.

Tickets will be available closer to the event period on the website.

Note that during 4.30pm and 9pm, you can only use the Nishi-Tachikawa gate to enter the park. On Saturday, Sunday and holidays, however, the Sunagawa gate will stay open as well. 

Yokohama's spacious Sankeien garden is home to several priceless structures, including a three-storey pagoda from Kyoto, historical teahouses and a feudal lord’s former residence. On this occasion, the Rinshunkaku building, a former samurai lord’s summer villa and a registered Important Cultural Property, will be opened to the public from December 4 to 10, coinciding with the golden red and yellow autumn foliage. Entry costs ¥1,000 and tickets must be purchased online via Peatix.

Visit during the evening hours on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and holidays between November 13 to December 10 for a special light-up between sundown and 7.30pm (last entry 7pm).

From November 17 until December 3, the serene Koishikawa Korakuen garden is celebrating its annual autumn festival from 9am to 5pm daily. Aside from admiring the beautiful autumn leaves including red maple, you can enjoy a free koto and shakuhachi flute performance on Thursday November 23 at 11.30am and 1.30pm.

To help keep you warm, Koishikawa Korakuen is serving charcoal-grilled mitarashi dango (mochi with sweet soy sauce glaze) and amazake from 10am to 4pm on selected days: November 18, 19, 23, 25-30 and December 1-10.

Succulent crab legs, salmon roe bowls and uni (sea urchin) croquettes are just some of the mouthwatering bites you’ll find at the Sakana & Japan Festival. Happening from November 23 to 26, this four-day event in Odaiba is one of Tokyo’s largest seafood festivals, where you can feast on fish, crustaceans and the like to your heart’s content.

There’s going to be around 90 stalls offering hot dishes like oyster ramen, seafood tom yum and miso lobster hot pot to keep you going on a cold winter day. You’ll also find dishes with acquired flavours, such as stewed ankimo (monkfish liver), which will definitely appease serious foodies. Whatever your choice, you can always wash it all down with sake or beer.

Entry is free, and you can pay for meals with cash or electronic payment like Suica and Pasmo.

Coffee lovers would not want to miss this caffeine fest, where you can try locally roasted coffee from over 40 labels in one place. Held at Hammerhead shopping complex, Yokohama Coffee Festival is an opportunity to sample a variety of coffee at a reasonable price. For ¥1,500 (advance purchase ¥1,400), you’ll get four 90ml cups of coffee from the participating booths. 

Some of Tokyo’s most popular cafes are taking part this year, including Woodberry Coffee, Single O and Passage Coffee. There are also plenty of Kanagawa-born businesses such as Motomachi Coffee Roastery, Cafe Kopi Kan and Cheers Coffee, just to name a few.

If you want a break from coffee, stop by Mork Chocolate for hot cocoa, or Prana Chai for a fragrant chai latte. Entry to the festival is ¥500 per person. We recommend purchasing tickets online in advance via KKday to get a discount.

The 400m-long Keyakizaka Street next to the Roppongi Hills shopping centre is lighting up with 800,000 sparkling white and blue LEDs until Christmas Day. From the pedestrian bridge near the Roppongi Hills Arena, you'll get a stunning view of the trees covered in shimmering lights, with Tokyo Tower in the background, from 5pm to 11pm daily. 

While you’re in the area, make sure to drop by the Mohri Garden, a Japanese-style green space sandwiched between Roppongi Hills Mori Tower and the TV Asahi building, which is illuminated with blue lights from November 6 to 18. There’s also a bouquet-inspired illumination at 66 Plaza to commemorate Roppongi Hills’s 20th anniversary, with 200,000 LED lights illuminating the surrounding trees.

The neighbourhood surrounding Toranomon Hills is getting light art installations for a limited time this winter. This event is held in partnership with the Light Art Collection, an outfit known for operating the annual Light Festival in Amsterdam. 

You’ll come across seven breath-taking installations created by artists, architects and product designers from around the world. Oval Park features bioluminescence lights scattered all over the grass lawn. Made to look like a field of fireflies, this stunning display is created by Studio Toer from the Netherlands.

Saio Park, on the other hand, has a tornado-like light installation made from a stack of rings, designed by UxU Studio in Taiwan. Make sure you stop by the Step Garden as well to see an installation of colourful butterflies floating among the greenery, created by Italian design studio Aether & Hemera.

Located next to Tokyo amusement park Yomiuri Land, the Hana Biyori garden is lit up with a spectacular illumination display until February 25, 2024. Follow the path lined with 500 takeakari bamboo lanterns and takemari ( ball-like objects made from bamboo) and you’ll come to a historical gate that was transplanted from the Kyoto Imperial Palace.

Once inside, you’ll find a wall of illuminated Japanese umbrellas that look like colourful lanterns, leading you further inside the garden. Awaiting here are more takeakari and takemari, in addition to a lit up chozuya (basin with purified water) decked out with flowers. A new addition this year are the kiri-e (paper cutout) lanterns, which are placed around the garden’s East waterfall. 

To complete your visit, you can rent a Japanese umbrella and lantern to walk around and take photos with for just ¥200.

Renowned for its cherry blossoms by the Sumida River, Sumida Park has always attracted locals and tourists alike, especially during the spring. But beyond its scenic beauty, the park has a poignant history, with the land it occupies having undergone significant redevelopment following the devastating Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923. This disaster claimed the lives of approximately 105,000 individuals, with 48,000 of those tragedies occurring in the Honjo district of Sumida ward alone.

As we mark the earthquake's 100th anniversary, Sumida's community is gearing up to pay homage to this history. Through the Sumida River Momotose-no-se festival, the community will present parades, dances, and heartfelt performances. These acts will not only honour those who were lost but also highlight the resilience and unity of Sumida, celebrating the progress made since those challenging times.

Among the highlights are the Sumiyume Dance Parade on October 28, taking place at Sumida Plaza Park from 2pm-8pm. Additionally, artist Chiharu Mizukawa will showcase her unique aburidashi paintings at Ushijima Shrine from 9.30am to 4.30pm between October 22 and October 28. Originally a ninja technique for sending secret messages with invisible ink, Mizukawa uses aburidashi to depict trees, mountains, and cityscapes. For a detailed schedule and more, visit the official website.

This autumn, The National Art Center in Tokyo is hosting an exclusive retrospective dedicated to the life and work of acclaimed French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent. Saint Laurent became a pivotal figure in fashion at just 21, leading the House of Dior before establishing his eponymous brand in 1962.

Crowned the ‘King of Fashion’, Saint Laurent revolutionised 20th-century women’s fashion with iconic creations like the 1965 Mondrian dresses and the introduction of safari pantsuits. This retrospective is the first comprehensive showcase of the designer’s work in Japan, offering insight into his 40-year illustrious career and distinctive style through various artefacts and photographs.

A collaborative effort with the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris, the exhibition showcases around 110 pieces of the designer's seminal work, including garments, accessories and sketches.

Do note that the market will be cancelled in the case of rain.

Step into an enchanted digital forest in this collaborative exhibition between teamLab and Galaxy. Now in its third iteration, the interactive experience is based on the concept of catching different digital creatures to study them before releasing them back into their habitat. As it's a digital art experience, you'll be using an app on the Galaxy smartphone to collect different prehistoric animals in the mystical forest.

Be gentle when approaching these critters! If you try to touch them they might run and disappear into the forest. If you're lucky, they might become curious instead and turn towards you. Nevertheless, the exercise here is to point your phone camera at them, release a Study Arrow in their direction, and capture them onto your screen so that you can learn more about their nature.

You can also work together with other visitors and shepherd the dinosaurs projected on the floor. This allows you to then deploy the Study Net and capture them into your phone. Once you've done studying them, you can release them back into the space.

While the exhibit is free, reservations are required so as to avoid overcrowding the venue. Each session is an hour long, with the exhibition open from 11am until 7pm daily. You can book a timeslot as early as three days in advance via the event website.

Shinji Ohmaki creates breathtaking, large-scale installations that audiences lose themselves in. These works are more than just ‘Insta-genic’ spectacles; with them, the artist disrupts our bodily and psychological senses in order to get us asking some big questions: What has led society to the issues it now faces, and what are our reasons for continuing to exist?

As you visit the National Art Center, Tokyo’s largest exhibition hall, you become a participant in worlds conjured by three immersive installations that make dramatic use of the vast space. Through the extremes of enveloping darkness and intensely illuminating light, augmented by video, sound and poetry, Ohmaki creates a sense of integration with nature that is increasingly being lost in modern lifestyles.

Reflected in these works are the artist’s thoughts on civilisation and nature, as well as life and death, over the period spanning the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Text by Darren Gore

This exhibition at Tokyo National Museum offers a first glimpse into 102 never-before-seen pieces by Japanese contemporary artist Tadanori Yokoo. Born in Hyogo in 1936, Yokoo’s influential artistry has graced the globe, with exhibitions in New York, Paris, Venice and beyond, earning him prestigious accolades, including the Asahi Prize.

In a series marking a pinnacle in his artistic journey, Yokoo masterfully reimagines the legendary tales of two eccentric Tang dynasty poets called Hanshan and Shide. Immersed in creative fervour during the pandemic's solitude, Yokoo transcends time and space, weaving enthralling narratives and posing myriad questions to the observer. Each piece is a gateway to a vivid spiritual journey, reflecting the allure of these legendary personalities across Japanese and Chinese traditions.

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) remains one of the key figures in Western art history, and it is his influence on the still life genre that is explored by this all-star exhibition. With Van Gogh’s work accompanied by still life pieces from the likes of Cézanne, Gaugin, Monet and Renoir, the Dutch Post-Impressionist’s work is placed within the context of the development of European still life painting from the 17th-century Netherlands through to the early 20th century.

This reveals what Van Gogh learned from his predecessors, how this manifested itself in his own work, and how he in turn influenced future generations of artists. Of the 69 works shown here, 25 are by Van Gogh himself.

It is of course Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ paintings that he is best known for (along with his tragic personal life). This exhibition doesn’t disappoint on the floral front, with an area devoted to sunflower paintings from both Van Gogh and those he inspired.

Note: Purchase tickets online and save ¥200. The museum is closed on Mondays (except January 8 2024) and Dec 28-Jan 3.

Text by Darren Gore

French artist Claude Monet was initially ridiculed for his Impressionism, which consisted of painting thin, rapid strokes using vivid colours. Still, he is now recognised as one of the greatest artists of his time. 2024 will mark 150 years since the world’s first Impressionist exhibition was held in Paris in 1874. This year, Japan is hosting two significant retrospectives dedicated to Monet and his works in Tokyo and Osaka to celebrate the momentous anniversary. The exhibition in Tokyo will be held at the Ueno Royal Museum from October 20 to January 28 2024, and showcase everything from his early portraits to late landscapes, including pieces from his famous ‘haystacks’ series.

Born in Llanelli, Wales, in 1958, Cerith Wyn Evans pursued his artistic education in London, notably at Saint Martin’s School of Art and the Royal College of Art. Initially known for his involvement in experimental filmmaking and assisting famed director Derek Jarman, Evans transitioned into visual art in the 1990s, yet his cinematic roots left an indelible mark. His oeuvre stands out for its exploration of form, be it through photography, neon-lit texts, sound, or video installations. Often invoking post-symbolist and avant-garde literature, his works serve as enigmatic interplays of light and shadow, fact and fiction. 

Evans is celebrated for his nuanced use of light and has carved a niche with his sculptural creations that challenge perceptions, blending the tangible and intangible. His mastery in manipulating neon, sound, photography and glass to shape immersive environments renders a unique sensory experience. With several accolades under his belt, including notable exhibitions at prestigious institutions worldwide, Evans' artworks grace the permanent collections of iconic institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern, and of course, the Fondation Louis Vuitton. This Tokyo exhibition, encapsulating works curated before the foundation's opening in 2007, promises an enriching experience of Evans’ unparalleled artistic journey.

This exhibition at Tokyo National Museum offers a first glimpse into 102 never-before-seen pieces by Japanese contemporary artist Tadanori Yokoo. Born in Hyogo in 1936, Yokoo’s influential artistry has graced the globe, with exhibitions in New York, Paris, Venice and beyond, earning him prestigious accolades, including the Asahi Prize.

In a series marking a pinnacle in his artistic journey, Yokoo masterfully reimagines the legendary tales of two eccentric Tang dynasty poets called Hanshan and Shide. Immersed in creative fervour during the pandemic's solitude, Yokoo transcends time and space, weaving enthralling narratives and posing myriad questions to the observer. Each piece is a gateway to a vivid spiritual journey, reflecting the allure of these legendary personalities across Japanese and Chinese traditions.

Cubism’s groundbreaking inception by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque revolutionised art in the early 20th century, offering a geometric perspective that birthed abstract art and Surrealism. The Centre Pompidou in Paris, globally revered for its modern art collection, brings this transformative movement to Japan with over fifty works making their debut appearance here.

Featuring masterpieces from the likes of Picasso and Braque, the exhibition showcases around 140 works, encapsulating the movement’s rich diversity. Highlights include Braque’s impactful ‘Grand Nu’ and Picasso’s exemplary ‘Femme assise dans un fauteuil’. Moreover, Robert Delaunay’s magnificent ‘La Ville de Paris’ will grace Japan for the first time, alongside exemplary works by Chagall.

With a kaleidoscopic showcase of Cubism’s most influential artists including Constantin Brancusi, Marc Chagall, Sonia Delaunay and Amedeo Modigliani, this event marks the first comprehensive showcase of Cubism in Japan in fifty years. 

If you’re looking to immerse in Japanese culture, visit Tokyo National Museum in Ueno Park to partake in a variety of traditional Japanese experiences. This sprawling institution holds a vast collection of Japan’s National Treasures, including the Okyokan, a well-preserved heritage house located on the north side of the museum grounds. This traditional dwelling was built in 1742 and later donated to the museum in 1933. It’s home to reproduced fusuma (vertical panels that act as sliding doors) murals by Maruyama Okyo, a famous Japanese painter during the Edo period (1603-1867).

This secluded part of the museum is usually closed to the public, but it’s now open for this special cultural event until January 28 2024. So take this opportunity to see this beautiful traditional Japanese house and participate in the daily workshops. Experiences include how to prepare matcha, how to wear kimono, zen breathing and bonsai growing. While walk-ins are welcome, it’s best to secure a spot in advance via the website. 

Okyokan also has a café and it’s open to everyone, even if you’re not here for the workshops. There are soba noodles, inari sushi and miso soup on the menu, along with Ichiro’s Malt Japanese Whisky, Aramasa sake, Choya Umeshu plum wine as well as classic Japanese desserts such as warabi mochi and wagashi.

While Okyokan is free to visit, you’ll need a ticket (adults ¥1,000, university students ¥500) to enter the Tokyo National Museum compound.