The best events, festivals and things to do in Tokyo in May 2024

This annual festival in Machida invites dancers from Japan's tropical southern prefecture of Okinawa to perform in Tokyo. On Saturday May 11, you can catch a series of Okinawan michijune dance performances around the Haramachida-odori neighbourhood near Machida Station's North Exit from 1pm to 4.30pm. Three eisa dance groups will parade the streets with drums for a lively show.

On Sunday May 12 from 11am to 6.00pm, you can see 18 groups performing the traditional Okinawan eisa dance along Haramachida-odori street. There will be street food, too, as always at any Japanese festival.

Chefs specialising in Sichuan cuisine from around Tokyo will be serving up their signature mouth-numbing dishes at Nakano Central Park over the May 11-12 weekend. Thirteen restaurants are participating in this year’s extravaganza, including Yang Xiang Ajibo, Tenshin Gyoza, Chen Mapo Doufu and many more.

You’ll be able to choose from a variety of classic Sichuan dishes including mapo tofu, dandan noodles and hot pot. Don’t forget to grab a can of Tsingtao Chinese beer to go with your fiery meal. 

One of the largest of Yoyogi Park's many cultural celebrations, the Thai Festival often benefits from lovely springtime weather. So join the crowds and fill up on Thai delicacies like pad thai, green curry and gapao rice from a selection of Tokyo's Thai restaurants like Jasmine Thai and Krung Siam.

Away from the food, there are plenty of stalls to browse, where you’ll find everything from handicrafts to bottles of Singha. There's live entertainment, too, in the form of performances like traditional dancing, Thai rock, martial arts demonstrations, and even a fashion show.

Both days have packed schedules and you can check the timetable on the website.

Craving soba, somen, ramen, udon, or all of the above? The Kanmen (meaning ‘dry noodles’) Grand Prix is returning to Tokyo in May for you to decide the best soup-less noodle dish out of 36 contenders. Held for two days from May 18 to 19 at the central square of Komazawa Olympic Park, this free-entry food festival is an opportunity to taste noodle dishes from across Japan, at an affordable price of ¥500 per bowl. 

Be sure to not miss the chewy Sanuki udon topped with Sanuki olive beef from Kagawa prefecture, the udon capital of Japan. If you’re feeling particularly adventurous, try some somen crepes made with fresh fruit, azuki beans and fried somen noodles. (If you want to try making it at home, here’s the recipe provided by the organisers.)

Pair your selection of dry noodles with a cold can of Yona Yona Ale from Yo-Ho Brewing or another craft beer from Spring Valley.

Entry to the noodle festival is free. You’ll just buy food and drink as you go. While some stores accept cashless payments, be sure to bring cash as well. The first 1,500 visitors per day will get a free soda-flavour Garigari-kun popsicle, the perfect remedy for a hot sunny day.

If you’re craving some Taiwanese food this spring, then drop by Tokyo Skytree Town for its Taiwan Festival. Head over to the fourth floor of Sky Arena until May 26 to feast on Taiwanese food throughout the day. There are several stalls offering popular Taiwanese cuisine such as lu rou fan (braised pork over rice) and da ji pai fried chicken.

You can also shop for Taiwanese goods and even enjoy massages and fortune telling. The dining area is decorated with red lanterns to give it a Taiwanese night market feel.

Tokyo's jazz culture is constantly evolving, taking on new forms and incorporating diverse influences to create new sounds. And Time Out Tokyo's signature music event Beats and Brews aims to capture this dynamic scene by bringing together jazz aficionados and leading performers for a live show emblematic of Tokyo's vibrant nightlife.

The annual Fuji Shibazakura Festival is returning this spring with a staggering 500,000 pink, purple and white blooms from April 13 to May 26. With its seemingly endless fields of shibazakura (pink moss) and view of majestic Mt Fuji on the horizon, it's no wonder that this annual spring festival out at Lake Motosu in Yamanashi typically attracts hordes of Tokyoites over Golden Week. 

In addition to the eight kinds of shibazakura, you’ll get to see other colourful blooms like cherry blossoms, grape hyacinth, poppy anemone and forsythia. While you’re here, it’s also worth checking out the adjacent Peter Rabbit-themed English Garden, decorated with around 300 kinds of plants as well as figurines of the characters from the storybook. 

One of the best ways to get here is by highway bus. A round-trip ticket including festival entry fee starts from ¥7,800, with the bus departing from Bus Terminal Shinjuku, Mark City Shibuya, Futakotamagawa Rise and Tokyo Station. It takes you directly to the Fuji Shibazakura Festival in around two and a half hours. We recommend making reservations in advance because seats can fill up quickly during spring.

Otherwise, you can opt for the two-hour-long Limited Express Fuji Excursion train from Shinjuku to Kawaguchiko Station, and hop on the Fuji Shibazakura liner shuttle bus for another 50 minutes to get to the venue.

You can catch free movies at Shibuya Stream this spring from April 28 to May 12. One to two different films will be screened each day, including the likes of ‘Top Gun Maverick’, ‘Ghost Busters’, ‘Mamma Mia’, 'La La Land’ and 'Baby Driver'. 

Most movies will be in English with Japanese subtitles, but there will also be a few dubbed in Japanese. Screening times depend on the day, but you can check the schedule on the website.

The event is free and no tickets are required. However, reservations aren't accepted and space is limited, so we recommend arriving earlier to guarantee a seat.

You've seen them on RuPaul's Drag Race and now you can see them live on stage. This May, some of the world’s top drag queens are coming to Tokyo for Japan’s biggest international drag show. This will be the drag event's fourth stint in the city following its first show in January 2023.

This year's international headliners include Alaska, Courtney Act and Willam, who will be joined by familiar faces from Tokyo’s local drag queen scene, with unstoppable forces like Sera Tonin, Labianna Joroe and Vera Strondh. 

The event begins at 7pm (doors open from 6pm) on May 19, but those with meet and greet tickets (¥30,000 per person inclusive of event entry) will be able to enter the venue from 4.30pm to say hi to their favourite idols before the show. General standing tickets are also available online for ¥12,000 per person, but they're selling out fast so you’ll want to book them sooner rather than later!

Tachikawa's Showa Kinen Park isn't content with merely hyping sakura: its Flower Festival takes place over three months and celebrates the blooms of tulips (in April), poppies and rapeseeds (May) and water lilies (May), of course in addition to the cherry blossoms in March and April.

2024 marks a special milestone for Showa Kinen Park, as the massive green space is celebrating its 40th anniversary. To commemorate the occasion, park officials will be planting a staggering 1.8 million nemophila plants, which will turn into a gorgeous sea of blue once they bloom. 

Along with flower-viewing, the park will be hosting a number of floral-themed events, and dedicated photo spots will be set up on the premises. Photo sessions will include time to take pics among the park’s 250,000 colourful tulips without crowds in the background, while a special spot will allow you to capture the nemophila accented with soap bubbles.

Taking over the expansive outdoor lawn within the children’s play area at Meiji Shrine’s Outer Gardens, the Forest Beer Garden distinguishes itself from other boozy events in town with its lush green surrounds and bubbling waterfall.

The popular two-hour all-you-can-eat (¥5,880) option includes everything from barbecue beef, pork and lamb to veggies, yakisoba noodles, grilled onigiri and even ice pops. It includes an all-you-can-drink selection of seven kinds of beers including Kirin and Heineken, in addition to whisky, sours, wine and soft drinks. Despite being one of the largest beer gardens in Tokyo with a capacity for around 1,000 people, the event can get extremely busy at weekends, so advance bookings are recommended via the website.

The rooftop of Lumine Shinjuku has transformed into a beer garden where you can watch movies curated by Cinema Caravan, also known as the organisers of the annual Zushi Film Festival. You can choose from three kinds of cuisines – American, Korean or Mexican barbecue courses, all offered in light (from ¥5,390), standard (from ¥5,940) and premium (from ¥6,490) plans. The World Trip BBQ Premium Plan offers a taste of all the cuisines in one course, for ¥7,590.

The all-American course comes with classic beef short ribs, pork, jerk chicken and sausage, accompanied with condiments like buffalo sauce, magic mustard and Kansas City barbecue sauce. The Korean course, on the other hand, features a one-centimetre-thick slab of samgyeopsal (pork belly), beef short rib, scallops, kimchi and four kinds of dips including dadaegi miso and yangnyeom (sweet and spicy) sauce. The Mexican course comes with beef, jerk chicken, pork, as well as seafood options like scallops, salmon and shrimp, and a side of guacamole. All courses come with 90 minutes of all-you-can-drink beverages from a list of 160 cocktails and soft drinks.

Popular German craft beer brand Schmatz takes over the Lumine Ikebukuro rooftop with its annual beer garden serving modern German cuisine. It features four original craft beers, plus a range of beer cocktails including shandy gaff, cassis beer, mango beer and even a banana weizen. Additionally, there are regular cocktails, highballs, shochu and wines to choose from as well. 

The standard barbecue plan (¥6,000) includes sauerkraut, camembert cheese ahijo with baguette, sausages, beef, pork, and an array of veggies to grill. You can order drinks as you go, but we recommend adding an additional ¥500 to get an all-you-can-drink deal on its four speciality beers on tap.

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.

Craft, creativity, heritage and modernity all converge in this immersive visual journey through the 187-year history of American jewellery maestros Tiffany. Within the gallery space of Tokyo Node, situated in the soaring Toranomon Hills Station Tower complex, ten rooms are filled with hundreds of captivating creations that range from one-of-a-kind items to iconic accessories that has become part of popular culture.

One standout amongst many is the very first iteration of Tiffany’s emblematic ‘Bird on a Rock’ brooch. This was conceived by longstanding Tiffany designer Jean Schlumberger, whose work for the brand won over clients including actresses Audrey Hepburn and Greta Garbo. As with many of Schlumberger’s works, this magnificent nature-themed piece reminds us that, for all of their luxury and glamour, diamonds are ultimately something derived from the earth itself.

The exhibition also explores Tiffany’s relationship with Japan, which stretches back to the company’s earliest days. Many designers closely associated with Tiffany, including Elsa Peretti and Edward Chandler Moore, took inspiration from traditional Japanese arts, making ‘Tiffany Wonder’ a spiritual homecoming for some of the featured works.

Tickets are available online.

The exhibition is closed on the following dates: April 17 (5pm-8pm), April 22 (6.30pm-8pm), April 30 (5pm-8pm), May 8 (11.30am-1pm, 5pm-8pm), May 13 (6pm-8pm), May 16 (6pm-8pm).

Yokohama’s premier celebration of the arts takes place every three years. Themed ‘Wild Grass: Our Lives’, the 2024 edition will centre on the Yokohama Museum of Art, the Former Daiichi Bank Yokohama Branch, and BankART Kaiko, as well as a wide variety of venues around the city, welcoming an international lineup of 93 artists – 20 of whom will be exhibiting all-new works.

Tickets are available here or via our affiliate partner Klook.

Renowned 20th-century master Henri Matisse (1869-1954), though best known as a painter, was a true multimedia artist whose creativity also spanned sculpture, printmaking and other forms. This is the very first exhibition in Japan to focus on the French artist’s work with paper cut-outs, the medium he energetically pursued in the last decade-and-a-half of his life.

Works on loan from the Matisse Museum in Nice, France show how the artist began creating expressionistic collages composed of scissor-cut pieces of paper in a multitude of colours. The subjects and themes of these cutout works included the female form, avian life, and a distinctive two-dimensional take on the flowers-and-fruit still life. While initially modest in size, these cut-outs grew in scale to become murals spanning entire walls: the largest example featured here is some eight metres wide.

Also on show is a selection of works in other media, including painting, ink brush on paper, and stained glass.

This exhibition is closed on Tuesday, except April 30.

Text by Darren Gore

Opened in 2016 in Munich, the Museum of Urban and Contemporary Art (MUCA) holds one of Europe’s foremost collections of urban-inspired contemporary art, encompassing the likes of Kaws, Banksy and Shepherd Fairey. Now Tokyo, a key city in global street culture, finally gets a taste of the MUCA collection with the arrival of this touring exhibition that has already wowed Kyoto and Oita City.

Over 60 major pieces, including career-defining work by the above-mentioned figures as well as fellow legends including JR, Invader and Barry McGee, are being shown in Japan for the very first time. Highlights include Banksy’s ‘Bullet Hole Bust’, in which the artist’s anti-establishment attitude is rendered in 3D form: the cultural bust form associated with classical art is brutalised by a bullet to the forehead. Kaws’s ‘4ft Companion (Dissected Brown)’, meanwhile, cuts away the left-side ‘skin’ of one his signature ‘Companion’ characters to reveal its inner organs.

Text by Darren Gore

The Tokyo Contemporary Art Award, established in 2018, is a prize intended to encourage mid-career artists to make further breakthroughs in their work by providing winners with several years of continuous support. Here, the two winners of the award’s fourth edition each present shows that, despite their creative diversity, both involve visitors and their actions becoming key elements of the art. Through this, both shows lead audiences to examine their relationships: with fellow humans, animals, and society’s expectations.

Saeborg, born in 1981 and based in Tokyo, creates and performs as a latex bodysuit-clad ‘imperfect cyborg, half human and half toy’ that enables the female behind this guise to transcend such characteristics as age and gender. Here Saeborg presents ‘I Was Made for Loving You’, for which a section of the venue has been transformed into a life-sized toy farm. Visitors will experience a highly immersive installation-performance that transcends the boundaries between the body and synthetic materials, and between human and animal.

Michiko Tsuda (born in 1980 and working in Ishikawa prefecture) presents ‘Life is Delaying’, an installation that uses video to explore the notion of physicality. The work recreates the private world experienced by a family at home through the perspective of someone operating an old-school video camera. The piece was inspired by Tsuda’s childhood memory of a video camera appearing in her family residence. Here, fictitious documentation of a family, the smallest basic unit of society, is expanded upon to examine the positions of individuals within larger groups and systems.

The exhibition is closed on Monday (except April 29 and May 6), April 30 and May 7.

British-born artist Mark Leckey is a product of the UK’s ever-vibrant pop culture, and through diverse mediums he confronts youth, dance music, nostalgia, social class and history from an often countercultural perspective. The subcultural edge of his work – which encompasses film, sound, sculpture, performance, collage and more – additionally takes on a gritty incongruousness when enjoyed at Louis Vuitton’s sleek Omotesando exhibition space.

The French luxury house here presents two Leckey works from its collection. 'Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore feat. Big Red Soundsystem' (1999-2003-2010) is a film that, through a mash-up of archive footage, vividly traces the development of the UK’s underground dance music scene from 1970s disco through to the ’90s rave scene.

2013’s 'Felix the Cat', meanwhile, is a giant inflatable rendering of the cartoon cat that Leckey considers a pioneer of the digital age. Almost a century ago, this feline character was one of the first subjects to be transmitted as a TV signal.

Text by Darren Gore

The mid-century modern (MCM) aesthetic, most commonly associated with the work of Charles and Ray Eames, emerged in the years following WW2 and thrived from the 1950s to the ’70s across the USA, Europe and Scandinavia, also influencing the Japanese design of the time. Now, this mode of interior, product and architectural design is more popular than ever: in Tokyo, the Eames’ famed shell chair is seen everywhere from hip cafés to dental offices.

Tokyo Modernism 2024, taking place from late March through to mid-May, celebrates mid-century modern style through a program of events allowing you to get hands-on with iconic and rare items, meet expert MCM dealers, and maybe pick up something to enhance your home.

The Modernism Show (April 18-21), the program’s main event, sees guest rooms of Muji Hotel Ginza host pop-up shops where the owners of around 30 MCM-focused galleries and vintage shops, from both Japan and across the globe, will showcase and sell their often difficult-to-source items. Tickets are required for this exhibition, with prices starting from ¥3,000.

Over at Idée Tokyo in Marunouchi, the Modernism Auction (March 22 to April 9; then April 12-23) will offer rare pieces previously owned and used by gallery and shop owners participating in Tokyo Modernism 2024. Items range from functional furniture designed by names such as Alvar Aalto and George Nakashima to decorative pieces from artists including Lisa Larson.

Back in Ginza, Muji Atelier presents the Mid-Century Muji free exhibition (March 29 to May 12). Muji’s products, just like MCM designs before them, have long embodied a simplicity and functionality that is in tune with the lifestyles of their era. Mid-Century Muji extrapolates upon this notion to present a mocked-up architect’s office in which existing Muji items have been reworked into an MCM style.