The best things to do in Tokyo this weekend

The charming neighbourhood of Nezu flaunts its shitamachi (downtown) roots at this autumn festival, which marks its 26th edition this year. The action centres around Nezu Shrine, which is hosting concerts and performances throughout the weekend, accompanied by a flea market and stalls selling traditional goods.

The rest of the neighbourhood follows suit, with attractions including performances of traditional Japanese music and various dances at the Fureai-kan community centre on Shinobazu-dori. You can also take part in a stamp rally: pick up a stamp sheet and map at Nezu Shrine, tour the seven designated spots to fill up your sheet, and return it to the starting point for the chance to win prizes which include a roundtrip ticket to Hagi-Iwami Airport in Shimane prefecture, pair vouchers for Spa Laqua, and more.

Dougu Matsuri is an annual festival held in October in Kappabashi, the wholesale district between Ueno and Asakusa that specialises in tools and kitchen supplies for the restaurant industry. Known affectionately as Tokyo's Kitchen Town, many shops here also welcome home cooks and the general public as you can also purchase items individually.

Over 100 stores will be participating in the event, where you’ll find great deals on cooking utensils, tableware, food samples and more. While the festival officially runs for a week, most of the festivities will be held on October 14, with events such as the local elementary school marching band parade (11am), tai chi stage performances (1.30pm), food trucks (10am-5pm) and even a character bento exhibition at the Taito City Life-Long Learning Center (10am-5pm).

Check the event website for more details.

Oeshiki, the festival commemorating the anniversary of Buddhist saint Nichiren's death, is the annual highlight at the majestic Ikegami Honmonji, the place where this holy honcho is said to have drawn his last breath, and attracts around 300,000 people each year. With origins reaching back more than 700 years, this one's got both tradition and spectacle, especially in the form of Saturday evening's mando procession that sees around 3,000 participants carry elaborate lanterns along the two-kilometre route from Ikegami Station to the temple (from 6pm). The festivities go on until late at night, ensuring an electric atmosphere.

The annual Bakeneko Parade in Kagurazaka is one of the more curious Halloween-related events in Tokyo. Everyone is welcome; all you have to do is dress up as a cat and bring a feline attitude.

It’s recommended that you register for a passport (¥500 for adults, free for children) in front of Park Luxe Kagurazaka from 10am to 3.30pm to get all the perks. They include using the changing rooms for free, receiving discounts from stores and restaurants, and collecting exclusive cat stamps from the neighbourhood. Primary school students and younger kids will even receive free snacks from participating stores.

Don’t worry if you don’t have an outfit. You can get a quick cat makeup done for ¥1,000 (¥500 for children) before the parade (numbered tickets for the makeup are distributed at 9.30am). Better yet, make a reservation online now to rent a cat kimono for ¥2,750 (limited to 12 people). The parade will pass along Kagurazaka O-dori toward Iidabashi Station, and back again when it hits the big crossing.

After the parade, get creative by participating in a live drawing event, where anyone can draw themselves in their spooky cat costumes on a giant scroll. Or, partake in a ninja-star throwing experience for ¥500 (limited to eight people).

Celebrated since 1968, this two-day festival takes place in front of JR Ikebukuro Station, with dozens of mikoshi (portable shrines) being paraded on the streets from 6pm to 7.30pm on September 29. Sunday's festivities also include a fife and drum parade (2.30pm), double-dutch and hip-hop dance performances (3pm in front of the station, 3.30pm at Azalea avenue), taiko drumming (4.30pm), plus a lion dance (5.10pm).

The second instalment of the Fukuro Matsuri happens two weeks later (Oct 12-13), with over 100 teams of yosakoi dancers parading through the neighbourhood.

The Sumi-Yume project, a local initiative promoting art, dance and crafts inspired by the great ukiyo-e artist Hokusai and the Sumida River, is hosting its ninth annual festival from September 1 to December 22. Held across multiple venues along the aforementioned waterway, the festival aims to revitalise the neighbourhoods surrounding the Sumida River through the arts including dance, theatre and film.

You can partake in a new style of Bon Odori dance as portrayed by Hokusai in his ukiyo-e print. This will take place on October 26 from 2pm to 8pm at the Sumida Park Soyokaze Square. During the day, you can also enjoy a variety of stage performances by local artists, such as folk music, DJ mixing, hip-hop and more.

Also, don’t miss the outdoor cinema taking over Lattest Sports on October 11 and the Sumida Park Soyokaze Square on October 12 and 13. While the screening schedule has yet to be announced on the event website, you can expect movies such as ‘Perfect Days’, ‘Sing Street’ and ‘Paddington’.

Sumi-Yume is set to announce many more publicly commissioned works soon. Be sure to check the website for the latest updates.

Did you miss the Bon Odori dance festivals that happened in Tokyo across July and August? Not to worry because you can still make it to one last summer soiree at the Yokai Bon Odori in Tachikawa. Held over the October 12-14 weekend, this unique event is themed after yokai, the supernatural creatures from Japanese folklore. These stories have been passed down from the olden days, just like the Bon Odori tradition.

Aside from dancers dressed in yokai costumes, the festival will also feature live sets by DJ Towa Tei (Oct 12), indie j-pop solo artist Xiangyu (Oct 13), producer Zombie-chang (Oct 14) and many more. As with all Japanese festivals, you can expect to see family-friendly activities and games like target shooting, yo-yo fishing, character masks and face painting, as well as food stalls to keep you well-fed and satisfied. 

The festival’s food and activity area is open to the public for free, but the stage performance area requires a ¥3,500 entry fee, which can be purchased in advance via the website. Make sure to dress as a yokai or in yukata if you plan to attend, and get a free yokai face paint at the Yokai Food Stall Village. More details on the dress code here.

Kagurazaka is coming alive with a variety of activities happening between October 12 and November 3. Its main ‘“Painting on the Hill” event on November 3 is returning this year for the 26th time. The entire 700 metre-long Kagurazaka-dori street will be lined with a long roll of white paper for everyone to draw and paint on for free. Painting tools and equipment will be provided every few metres so you can contribute to this piece of community art. Even if you can’t be here in person, you can participate online by drawing on your smartphone. Your work will then be printed out and pasted onto the paper.

On October 27, visit Zenkokuji Temple for the Kagurazaka Art Square. Local artists will exhibit their work from paintings, calligraphy and illustrations to installations, paper cutouts, photography and prints. Visitors, however, are encouraged to vote for their favourite pieces from 10am to 4pm. 

Make your way to the Japan Latin Music Festival Timba this autumn, as Latin artists from all over Japan and across the globe are gathering in Shibuya to celebrate the passionate and energetic world of Latin Timba music. 

A popular music genre originated in Cuba, Timba is characterised by its vibrant energy and strong influences from salsa and Indigenous Son Cubano. Expect soul-stirring performances from artists such as Latin pianist Singo, Cuban singer-songwriter Yacel Sagarra, Timba band Café Amarillo and more at Shibuya Stream Hall. 

This year, the festival is adding a free section at the Shibuya Stream Inaribashi Square, where you can enjoy relaxing live acoustic performances. There will also be food trucks on site. 

Advance tickets will be available online from mid-August. Grab the early-bird tickets starting at ¥9,000 by September 12. Same-day tickets are ¥11,000 (prices subject to change).

Discover the fascinating world of Serbian food, tourism and culture at this one-day-only Serbia Fair at Daikanyama Hillside Terrace Annex-A.

The landlocked Balkan nation is home to mouthwatering dishes such as the savoury Serbian Cevapcici sausage and spicy ajvar spread as well as acclaimed wines, which are all available to sample at the event.

Don’t miss the live performances of Kolo, an energetic folk dance popular in the Balkan region. It’s also listed as a Unesco Intangible Cultural Heritage. There are two shows, at 12.30pm and 2.30pm, and they are each followed by a workshop where you can learn the steps.

Tachikawa's Showa Kinen Park has the most impressive fields of cosmos flowers in Tokyo and this is the ideal time to see them all in full bloom. The hilly grasslands of the park are usually draped in colour from mid-September with various types of cosmos flowers, and the multicoloured scenery can be enjoyed well into October.

There are three main gardens: The Lemon Bright field, which is covered in vivid yellow sulfur cosmos; Autumn Bouquet Garden, which has a mixture of 20 different cosmos; and the Cosmos Sensation filled with lilac blooms.

Don't miss the picturesque soap bubble event, where you can see countless small bubbles floating over the flower gardens. This special spectacle happens on October 4 and 5 at 10.30am and 12noon at the Autumn Bouquet Garden.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government No. 1 Building in Shinjuku now serves as the backdrop for a jaw-dropping and record-breaking projection mapping show. Covering an area of a whopping 13,905sqm, the after-dark spectacle has been certified by Guinness World Records as the largest permanent display of its kind in the world.

The nightly showcase features a range of visual wonders created by a mix of local and international artists. Some shows are inspired by Tokyo's rich history, while others draw on themes like the lunar cycle. 

Currently, on weeknights, you can catch ‘Evolution’, ‘Lunar Cycle’, 'Synergy', 'Poetic Structures' and 'Golden Fortune'. Additionally, there’s a new show that's just been introduced called ‘Butai ni tatte’, which is synchronised to a song by hit Japanese pop duo Yoasobi. On weekends, you can look forward to a showcase featuring 'Godzilla: Attack on Tokyo!', the aforementioned ‘Butai ni tatte (Yoasobi)’ as well as ‘Tokyo Concerto', a display featuring Tokyo attractions alongside music.

Shows take place every night from 7.30pm to 9.45pm. For more details and to check the full programme of daily projection mapping shows, visit here.

Immersive theatre group Dazzle Dance Company is set to deliver its inaugural performance of ‘Anemoia Tokyo’ on October 11. The semi-permanent production will be bigger than the production house’s previous works, and it’s an international collaboration with nine visionary artists from Japan and abroad.

This non-verbal theatre experience, set in a mysterious train platform hidden near Tokyo Station, takes audiences on an ethereal train ride to a different world. Anemoia Tokyo will be unlike any traditional theatre where the audience is separated from the actors. Here, the production promises to offer an immersive experience where the audience is integrated into the narrative and transported into the story.

Tickets are currently on sale online, with prices starting from ¥15,000. The location of the venue will be disclosed only to ticket holders.

Shows on weekdays and Saturdays start at 4pm, 6.30pm and 9pm. Sunday and holiday shows start at 1.30pm, 4pm and 6.30pm.

Japan is known for its array of unique manhole covers which feature everything from local mascots to pop culture icons including Astro Boy, Pokémon and Sailor Moon. If you want to get a behind-the-scenes look at how these unique drain covers are designed, you won’t want to miss this two day-only exhibition in Ikebukuro. The exhibition is one of the events being held in conjunction with the Tokyo Manhole Digital Rally and features an in-person talk show and exhibition on various manhole designs around Tokyo.

If you want to attend the talk show, you’ll have to register in advance online.

The world-famous German beer festival returns to the open plaza in front of Meiji Memorial Hall for the first time in 19 years this September. Running for 20 days, the Jingu Gaien Oktoberfest will see live Oompah band performances and generous servings of German beer, brewed in and imported especially from Germany for the event. There are no further details at the time of writing, so check the event website for updates.

Entry is ¥1,000. Food and drinks can be purchased with major credit cards and contactless payments.

One of Tokyo's three German beer fest spin-offs this autumn (including Shiba Park and Jingu-Gaien), Munich Oktoberfest kicks off on September 20 at Urban Dock LaLaport Toyosu. This beer extravaganza at least manages to fall within a few weeks of the original German beer-fuelled festival it's copying, running from September 20 until October 14.

As with all the other Oktoberfests in town, you can enjoy pints of German beer served in glasses that can fill up to a litre, alongside bratwurst and sauerkraut. There will be oompah bands to sweeten the mood.

Entry is free and you can pay as you go. Do note that the event is cashless; you can only pay via credit card, PayPay, IC card, Nanaco, ID and other forms of electronic payment.

This festival at Shin-Koiwa Park has more to offer than just your standard highball with whisky and soda. There will be around 15 booths serving up drinks centred around the shitamachi-style (downtown) highball, which has shochu and soda plus a ‘mystery extract’. Of course, if you want to take a break from the highballs, you can also opt for craft beer, wine and sake.

On the food side, you can enjoy horumon-yaki (grilled offal) stew, smoked turkey leg, tacos, egg omelette soba noodles and roast chicken, plus desserts such as churros and mango smoothies. The festival will set the mood with a wide range of live entertainment featuring singers, DJs and traditional dance performances.

Check the website for the full list of performing artists.

Tokyo Tower's alternative to the ubiquitous summer beer gardens is welcoming the outdoor drinking season with a double dose of whisky highballs. Head to the terrace at the base of the tower for a lengthy menu of highballs combined with a variety of drinking snacks (think karaage and grilled bacon).

There's also a meatier option on the roof of the Tower Foot Town building. The Tokyo Tower Rooftop Highball Garden serves up all-you-can-eat jingisukan, the Hokkaido-born lamb barbecue named after the Mongol warlord Genghis Khan.

Two hours of all-you-can-drink alcohol and limitless jingisukan can be had for ¥5,800 (teens aged 13-19 ¥3,800, primary school students ¥2,800, children aged 4-6 ¥1,800, all with non-alcoholic drinks, of course).

The Tokyo Tower Cho-Ten Highball Garden at the base of the tower is open until October 6, from 4pm-10pm on weekdays and 12noon-10pm on Sat, Sun & holidays.

The Tokyo Tower Rooftop Highball Garden is open until October 14, from 5pm-9.30pm daily. Make your reservations here.

In teamLab's new pop-up exhibition in collaboration with the Galaxy store in Harajuku, the digital art collective's enchanted forest has been transformed into an underwater fantasy. This latest installation is also an interactive one, where visitors can use smartphones to catch, study and release the colourful sea creatures they encounter in the space. There's a great variety of marine animals to see, including fish like tuna as well as aquatic creatures that are endangered or extinct. 

To catch a creature to study it, you can use the designated app on a Galaxy smartphone to scan fish swimming in the space, or throw out a 'Study Net' towards the floor if you see something interesting darting around your feet. 

Each session is an hour-long, with daily exhibitions open from 11am until 7pm. 

Note: an end date for this exhibition has yet to be announced.

French-born artist Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) has long loomed large over Roppongi Hills: her outdoor sculpture of a gigantic spider, named ‘Maman’, is a local landmark. The sprawling development’s Mori Art Museum, then, is a fitting venue for this major retrospective of one of the most important artists of the past century. As explored by Bourgeois’ first large-scale Japanese solo exhibition in over 25 years, fear was an ongoing motivation over her seven-decade career.

This fear, however, was not the arachnophobia that one might suppose, given the formidable ‘Maman’. Rather, Bourgeois’ work was driven in part by fear of abandonment; something rooted in her complex and sometimes traumatic childhood. Through her famed oversized sculptures, installations, drawings, paintings and other mediums, she confronted painful personal memories while simultaneously channelling them into work that expresses universal emotions and psychological states.

Across three exhibition ‘chapters’ that each explore a different aspect of family relationships, highlights include the ‘Femme Maison’ series of paintings from the 1940s. These works, which decades later were championed by the feminist movement, each depict a female figure whose top half is obscured by a house which protects yet imprisons her.

Bourgeois’ extensive use of the spider motif, meanwhile, is examined in depth. As hinted at by the landmark ‘Maman’ (the French equivalent of ‘mummy’), for Bourgeois the spider was symbolic of the mother figure who heals wounds just as a spider repairs the threads of its web. The artist's use of this powerful symbol is traced from a small 1947 drawing through to the giant Roppongi arachnid and its 'sister' sculptures located in several cities worldwide.

The exhibition is open until 11pm on September 27 and 28, until 5pm on October 23, and until 10pm on December 24 and 31.

This major exhibition is both a comprehensive overview of Japan’s visual creativity over the past several decades, and an illuminating ‘portrait’ of the state of the nation over the same timeline. It’s also a powerful argument for the importance of a critical and socially engaged mindset, from the perspective of the figure whose vast collection is used to assemble this show. Ryutaro Takahashi, a veteran of the student-led protests that shook 1960s Japan, has since the mid-1990s amassed what is now one of the world’s most significant collections of Japanese contemporary art.

Across two floors of this expansive museum, works by some 115 key artists and art collectives trace the arc of the economically precarious ‘lost decades’ that, from the ’90s onwards and up to the present, have followed Japan’s booming postwar era. In work from key Japanese artists active over this period, the emotional and psychological impact of challenging times is explored overtly by some creators and more obliquely by others. Works from lesser-known, up-and-coming artists are highlighted alongside creations from the biggest names in Japanese contemporary art, including Yayoi Kusama, Takashi Murakami, Shinro Ohtake and Yoshitomo Nara, to name but a few.

Among the exhibition’s six sections, perhaps the most stirring is one titled ‘Breakdown and Rebirth’, which introduces art created in the aftermath of 2011’s Great East Japan Earthquake. Elsewhere, highlights include Makoto Aida’s breathtaking ‘A Picture of an Air-Raid on New York City (War Picture Returns)’ from 1996, in which the artist depicts an imaginary scenario of a Japanese air attack on NYC, upon a six-panel traditional sliding screen.

This exhibition is closed on Mondays (except August 12, September 16 and 23, October 14 and November 4) as well as on August 13, September 17 and 24, October 15 and November 5.

Born in Tokyo in 1936, Keiichi Tanaami is a pioneer of pop art in Japan. Though his ultra-vivid, cartoon-esque creations in assorted media have long been widely acclaimed, and exhibited at such major institutions as the Art Institute of Chicago and London’s Tate Modern, right now Tanaami’s profile is higher than ever. The still-active veteran is currently represented by hip Tokyo gallery Nanzuka, he collaborates with the likes of Adidas and Yohji Yamamoto, and his work is undergoing a major positive reappraisal by the art world’s tastemakers.

Tanaami’s late-career surge in popularity is crowned by his first major career retrospective, taking place at one of his home city’s most prestigious art museums. Across the venue’s expansive galleries, consistently retina-popping work traces the artist’s progression from commercial designer – he was the first art director of Playboy magazine’s Japanese edition – to a leading figure in the country’s underground art scene.

Across paintings, collages, installations, sculptures, film, animation and more, Tanaami’s work shares a degree of spirit with Western pop artists. Simultaneously evident, though, is a visceral understanding of Japan’s unique wartime and postwar history, derived from the artist’s lived experience. The 1967 screen print ‘No More War 1’ echoes the pacifist sentiment of many young Japanese in that era, while ‘Drama of Death and Rebirth’, a 2019 canvas, is a psychedelic hellscape punctuated by fire from US fighter planes. Bringing things right up to date is Tanaami’s 2024 work for Japanese rock band Radwimps.

The work of Yoshiaki Kaihatsu goes one step beyond the social consciousness widely seen in global contemporary art. Born 1966 in Yamanashi prefecture, Kaihatsu has since the 1990s been pursuing work that involves him personally intervening in social structures. This method of his has been described as ‘one-person democracy’, hence the title of his first major show at a Tokyo art museum.

As demonstrated here by around 50 exhibits, Kaihatsu’s work both questions and reimagines the long-entrenched systems that most of us unquestioningly think of as ‘natural’ or ‘normal’. An exhibition zone named ‘Kaihatsu Town’, for example, contains an assortment of unique facilities, including a post office that delivers letters one full year after their posting, and a bank that does not handle money. 

Kaihatsu himself is present in the exhibition room each day (with occasional absences) to conduct activities which visitors may get involved in, or simply observe with intrigue and wonder. These include ‘100 Teachers’, in which 100 unique educators will give 100 equally singular classes, and events involving Kaihatsu’s collaborators in projects centred on the region hit by 2011’s Great East Japan Earthquake.

This exhibition is closed on Mondays (except August 12, September 16 and 23, October 14, November 4) as well as on August 13, September 17 and 24, October 15 and November 5.

The life of painter Tanaka Isson (1908-1977), best known for expressing the natural beauty of the Unesco World Heritage-designated island Amami Oshima, took a truly dramatic arc. While still a child, his outstanding talent for nanga – a Japanese painting style inspired by the aesthetics of the Chinese literati – led to him being hailed as a young prodigy destined for success.

After he dropped out of Tokyo Fine Arts School (now Tokyo University of the Arts) for still-unknown reasons, subsequent decades saw Isson work as a farmer, while continuing to paint despite lack of recognition. At the age of 50, in 1958, he relocated alone to remote Amami Oshima, close to Okinawa in Japan’s southwest, whose tropical flora and fauna would inspire him anew.

While working as a fabric dyer to support his artistic practice, Isson developed a way of conveying his idyllic new surroundings that was painterly and simultaneously marked by a level of vivid detail that could today be described as ‘high definition’. It was only following Isson’s death at the age of 69, while still residing on Amami Oshima, that his work began to receive its long-overdue acclaim.

Isson’s posthumous reputation has continued to grow, culminating in this major retrospective comprising over 250 works. Paintings, sketches, documents and other artefacts create a complete picture of the artist’s life and work, with some recently discovered pieces revealing hitherto unknown aspects of his creative practice.

This exhibition is closed on Mondays (except September 23, October 14, November 4),
September 24, October 15 and November 5.

This exhibition takes a compelling approach to displaying over 130 masterpieces drawn from the vast and wide-ranging Ishibashi Foundation Collection. Diverse works by Claude Monet, Jackson Pollock, Yayoi Kusama and other artists are presented here with a deep consideration of the circumstances under which they were created, and their subsequent passing down over generations. Works that now hang in world-class institutions such as the Artizon Museum, the show emphasises, may have originally been produced as decor for an individual’s home, while some have had intriguing journeys down to the present day.

Visitors are invited to imagine the places that an exhibit has occupied at various times, and this visualisation is greatly assisted by the contributions of leading designers and stylists. Lighting designer Shozo Toyohisa, for example, has devised lighting that recreates how people would have viewed 19th-century works by Rinpa school painter Suzuki Kiitsu, in the era in which they were created. Works from legendary names such as Constantin Brancusi, Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian and Pablo Picasso are joined by pieces from some lesser-known artists who are well worth discovering.

The exhibition is closed on Mondays (expect August 12, September 16 and 23, October 14) as well as August 13, September 17 and 24.

Shibuya has a major new contemporary art venue with the opening of this museum, designed to share selections from the formidable private collection of entrepreneur Kankuro Ueshima. The six-storey facility, located within a dramatically renovated building that previously housed the prestigious British School, is set up to display Ueshima’s collection of over 650 works, from foremost Japanese and international artists, to their fullest potential.

This inaugural exhibition approaches contemporary art from a variety of perspectives, with most unfolding over an entire floor of the museum. Down in the basement, the trailblazing spirit of abstract painting is explored through work that ranges in timeline from a 1991 work by Germany’s Gerhard Richter to a piece from London-based Jadé Fadojutimi, known for her investigations of identity and self-knowledge, that was completed just this year.

Spanning the first and second floors, meanwhile, is a look at individual expression that encompasses a breathtaking range of global talent: artists include Olafur Eliasson, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Dan Flavin and Theaster Gates, with several names being represented by multiple artworks. The power of collaborative efforts comes to the fore through pieces created by Takashi Murakami with late Off-White designer Virgil Abloh, and by Louise Bourgeois together with Tracy Emin.

The gaze of Japanese female painters is the theme explored on the third floor, through works by artists including Ulala Imai and Makiko Kudo, while on the fourth floor, works by Tatsuo Miyajima and others take diverse approaches to the notion of things changing and things disappearing. Finally, floor five is dedicated to a selection of paintings by Yoko Matsumoto, an abstract artist who derives inspiration from Western artistic modes while expressing an Asian sensibility.

Note that tickets are not available at the door; they must be purchased in advance online.