The best things to do in Tokyo this weekend

Celebrated Japanese sound giant Audio-Technica is bringing back its annual market – a celebration of all things analogue, from records and turntables to handmade crafts and vintage goods. First launched in 2022 to mark the company’s 60th anniversary, the market returns this autumn on a much larger scale, taking over SKAC (Skwat Kameari Art Centre) for a month from September 2 to October 4.

Focused on the act of listening, the event’s main highlights include a listening area inside the VDS record store, which also happens to be the market’s co-organiser. At this listening station, you can try out some of Audio-Technica’s finest products, including high-end wooden headphones, turntables and more.

Meanwhile, at the Skwat Hertz Orchestra Archive, you can listen to and compare seven original recordings made at SKAC. Audio recorded from street pianos placed around the venue, along with ambient sounds – think the rumbling of trains overhead and the occasional sneeze – is mixed together to create original pieces that you can only hear here. This theme of listening (after all, Audio-Technica’s motto is the ominous-sounding ‘Always Listening’) continues in the Listening Room, where you can enjoy music played through omnidirectional speakers.

On the weekends, the creative hub gets a makeover. On September 12 and 13, 24 record stores from across Japan will set up shop in the MM Storage room from 11am to 7pm. On the weekends of September 19-20, 26-27 and October 3-4, meanwhile, expect a flea market featuring artworks, handmade ceramics, vintage treasures, interior design pieces, fragrances, houseplants, wines and more.

Creema, organisers of the annual HandMade in Japan festival, celebrate creativity at a grand scale with this weekend market taking over the underground plaza in front of Tokyo Station. Over 100 artists, designers and craftspeople from all over Japan get together to sell accessories, clothing, pottery, sweets and much more, while the programme will also include fun workshops.

Nine months into the year and we've already lost track of how many Oktoberfests Tokyo has seen so far. But no matter, the next seasonally inaccurate festival of German beer happens at Shiba Park from September 11 to 23, where you can take in a view of Tokyo Tower while enjoying hefty glasses of beer. 

You can start small with a regular pint, or go straight for a gigantic three-litre glass. As for the beer, expect limited quantities of autumn-exclusive Festbier, brewed to be served at Munich’s Oktoberfest, alongside 11 other brands, including classics like Hofbräu, Paulaner and more. For 2026, you can also expect draft beer from Meissner, the oldest brewery in Saxony, which will be served in Japan for the first time. The food offerings include pub grub favourites like schnitzels, sausages, jerk chicken, cheese fondue and lobster pasta. Everything comes with a side of jazzed-up oompah music to keep you in the mood.

Entry is just ¥500, and you pay as you go. It includes an exclusive reusable cup which you can take home with you. Purchase your tickets here.

Sound, visual art and site-specific elements blend together in innovative and challenging ways at Ambient Kyoto, a multisensory, immersive exhibition that now makes its first foray into Tokyo, landing at Azabudai Hills Gallery. The display centres on the installation ‘async – immersion’, envisioned by the much-missed Ryuichi Sakamoto and Shiro Takatani of Dumb Type and first presented in Kyoto in 2023.

Inspired by Sakamoto’s 2017 album async, ‘async – immersion’ features visuals by Takatani and spatial audio design by sound engineer ZAK, whose fingerprints are all over many of Sakamoto’s late-career projects. At Azabudai Hills, the work has been reconstructed exclusively for the venue, with the setup including a 26-metre-wide screen for displaying the video elements of the installation.

True to the title of the work, the aural and visual components are aligned but not fully synchronised; their constantly shifting relationship rewards attentive viewing and encourages visitors to approach the work on their own terms.

Enjoy a late-night stroll under an artificial Milky Way at Tokyo Tower’s main deck. As an alternative experience for astronomy enthusiasts, Tokyo Tower has recreated the Milky Way using 30,000 LED lights, so you can gaze up at the (artificial) stars in the middle of the city.

Every 15 minutes, the blue LED lights that represent the starry sky turn pink and gold, while the Milky Way changes from white to a rainbow of seven colours. This special effect makes the Tokyo skyline look even more mesmerising, as if our beloved city is under a magical starry night.

The light-up runs from 9am to 11pm.

Inage Seaside Park in Chiba is hosting weekly DJ parties on its picturesque 90-metre-long pier that stretches out into Tokyo Bay, until September 27. Taking place on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays from 4pm to 8pm, the parties showcase artists spinning tunes from a variety of genres, including Balearic house, afrobeats, tech house, South African amapiano and more.

While the full 2026 line-up is unannounced, expect to see local favourites including Golden Roa, Mark Mila and Ahreum will also take to the decks, spinning everything from techno to R&B to keep the summer vibes alive.

Check the event website for the most up-to-date DJ line-up.

The National Stadium’s swanky next-door park is hosting a summer beer garden and outdoor cinema festival this month from July 17 to September 27. During the event, the park will be transformed into an open-air beer garden complete with tables, tents and plenty of seating. Hosted by Corona, the beer garden will serve favourites such as Corona Extra (¥750), alongside the brand’s non-alcoholic Corona Cero (¥600) and inventive Corona-infused cocktails. New for 2026 is the Corona Sunsets Truck, which will be serving drinks and appetisers designed to pair perfectly with Corona beer every Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

While you’re there, don’t miss the free outdoor film screenings taking place on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. This weekend outdoor cinema event is one of Japan’s largest, with screenings running for over 70 days. While the cinema line-up for 2026 has yet to be announced, last year’s programme featured Academy Award-winning titles such as Green Book and Top Gun: Maverick, as well as family favourites including Paddington, School of Rock, The Minions and more. Note that most screenings are Japanese-dubbed versions of the films.

While entry to the festival is free, a special reservation is required to enter on August 8, when the nearby Jingu Stadium is hosting the Jingu Gaien Fireworks Festival. Capacity is limited to two thousand visitors, so reserve a slot via the official website before it's too late.

The elegant Marunouchi Hotel gets into the beer garden spirit every summer, but as you’d expect from this nearly century-old hotel, it’s a far more refined affair than the rooftop beer gardens found on department stores across the city.

The Standard Course (¥8,500) features a seasonal menu that changes throughout the summer. July and August showcase Spanish flavours, with dishes such as brocheta skewers, seafood ajillo, sea bream ceviche, Spanish omelette and paella. From September, the menu shifts to French cuisine, including comforting dishes like chicken confit with potato mousseline and mustard.

All courses include 120 minutes of free-flowing drinks from a selection of more than 60 options, including beer, wine, cocktails and sours. For an additional ¥1,500, you can upgrade to a heartier main dish, such as beef sirloin steak. Best of all, you’ll enjoy your meal on the hotel’s elegant eighth-floor terrace, decorated in blue and white tones with superb views of nearby Tokyo Station.

Closed on July 31 for a private event. Reserve in advance via Tablecheck.

Shinjuku welcomes a brand new Korean pub-style beer garden, located on the rooftop of the Lumine Est shopping complex in the heart of the city. You can choose from four meal plans: the Pocha course (¥3,500), which includes yangnyeom chicken and bulgogi kimbap; the Korean Chicken BBQ course (from ¥4,000), offering chicken marinated in sweet and spicy miso sauce as well as salted green onion sauce; the samgyeopsal and beef galbi course (¥5,000), featuring makgeolli-aged samgyeopsal and seafood pancake; and the premium BBQ course (from ¥6,000), which builds on the samgyeopsal set with the addition of wagyu steak. All four courses come with a two-hour all-you-can-drink plan, with the options including fruit-flavoured soju, makgeolli, highballs, and both Korean and Japanese beers, along with unlimited banchan (Korean mini side dishes), French fries and curry.

Popular German craft beer brand Schmatz takes over the Lumine Ikebukuro rooftop with its annual beer garden serving modern German cuisine. The premium all-you-can drink plan features three original craft beers, plus a range of beer cocktails including shandy gaff, cassis beer, mango beer and even a peach weizen. Additionally, there are regular cocktails, highballs, wines and soft drinks to choose from as well. 

The standard barbecue plan with the premium 2-hour all-you-can-drink option will set you back ¥6,500, and includes spare ribs, beef shoulder loin, specialty sausages, chicken, corn and an array of veggies to grill. If you're looking to save, the standard all-you-can-drink lager beer plan at ¥6,000 is worth considering too.

Make a reservation via the official website.

South Korean digital art and design firm D’strict is joining hands with Sanrio to bring a popular interactive exhibit to Japan for the first time after a successful run in Seoul last year. Utilising the latest digital media technologies, the hotel-themed exhibition in Shinjuku’s Tokyu Kabukicho Tower takes you on a photogenic and immersive journey through 11 themed areas in the imaginary hotel, with characters such as Hello Kitty, My Melody, Kuromi, Cinnamoroll and Pompompurin appearing in their own dreamy, fairytale-like rooms.

While the full details are still under wraps, expect to see a plentiful line-up of exclusive Sanrio merch, including Hotel Floria room key charms, hotel sticker sets and travel-themed accessories.

The exhibition space is located on the fourth floor. Tickets are now on sale via Eplus.

The Pola Museum of Art celebrates two milestones with ‘The New Vision: Monet and the Contemporary Gaze’, a large-scale exhibition marking both the museum’s 25th anniversary and the centenary of the death of Claude Monet (1840–1926). Running from June 17 2026 to April 7 2027, the exhibition brings together all nineteen Monet paintings from the museum’s renowned collection, the largest trove of the Impressionist master’s works in Asia, alongside works by 18 contemporary artists from Japan and abroad.

Spanning Monet’s career from his early landscapes to his celebrated Water Lilies, ‘The New Vision’ places the artist’s works in dialogue with contemporary artistic practices. Featuring artists including Lucas Arruda, Pierre Huyghe, Roni Horn, Wolfgang Tillmans, Fujiko Nakaya, Kapwani Kiwanga and Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, the exhibition explores the theme of vision through a wide range of media, from photography, installation and sound to performance and environmental works. Many artists are being introduced to Japanese museum audiences for the first time, while several new commissions created specifically around Monet’s legacy also make their debut.

Extending beyond the galleries into the museum’s lobby and the surrounding forests of Hakone, the exhibition transforms the entire site into a landscape of visual discovery. By bringing together Monet’s enduring vision and the perspectives of contemporary artists, ‘The New Vision’ offers a compelling reflection on how we see, experience and understand the world today.

Daniel Buren has spent more than six decades questioning where an artwork begins and where the surrounding world enters into it. Internationally renowned for his unmistakable 8.7cm vertical stripes, the French artist has transformed this seemingly neutral motif into a rigorous conceptual tool, using it to expose the architectural, historical and symbolic conditions of every site he inhabits. This spring and summer, Scai Piramide in Roppongi presents ‘Situated Works 1966-2013’, a rare survey spanning nearly fifty years of his practice.

The exhibition traces Buren’s evolution from his early, radical interventions of the 1960s to luminous optical-fiber works produced in the 2010s. Historical pieces such as Peinture aux formes variables reveal the moment when the striped industrial fabric first became his defining visual language, while the Five Elements paintings, originally created for a 1989 exhibition in Nagoya, demonstrate his persistent dismantling of expressive authorship and painterly convention.

In later galleries, Buren expands this inquiry through works integrating LED-lit optical fibers, where colour and light become spatial phenomena rather than fixed surfaces. Their shimmering presence underscores the artist’s long-held conviction that colour is the irreducible core of visual experience. Deeply connected to Japan, Buren here appears as an artist whose disciplined investigations continue to sharpen our perception of space itself.

When the boundless imagination of Pablo Picasso meets the vibrant creativity of Sir Paul Smith, fireworks follow. Picasso (1881–1973), one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, revolutionised modern art with his radical innovations in form and colour. British designer Smith, noted for his playful approach to tailoring and his masterful sense of colour and pattern, brings his unique sensibility to the table, transforming the NACT’s galleries into a dialogue between art and fashion, and tradition and reinvention.

‘Adventure of Playful Spirits’ offers a fresh encounter with approximately 80 works from the Musée National Picasso-Paris. Following the success of the 2023 Paris exhibition ‘Picasso Celebration: The Collection in a New Light!’, this Japan edition invites visitors to rediscover the painter’s creative evolution from his early Portrait of a Man to the tender Paulo as Harlequin, through Smith’s imaginative spatial design.

From colour-splashed walls to whimsical décor, every element of the exhibition reflects Smith’s joyful spirit and his fascination with artistic play. This meeting of two creative giants – one who shaped modern art and another who redefined contemporary design – conjures up a vibrant, immersive world where curiosity, humour and craftsmanship intertwine.

Ron Mueck has long been celebrated for redefining figurative sculpture through extraordinary craftsmanship and emotional acuity. After early work in film and advertising, the Australian-born, UK-based artist emerged on the contemporary art scene in the mid-1990s, gaining international attention with Pinocchio (1996) and Dead Dad (1996-97), the latter exhibited in the landmark ‘Sensation’ show at London’s Royal Academy in 1997.

Over the decades, his meticulously crafted human figures, rendered at startlingly altered scales, have probed themes of vulnerability, solitude, resilience and the fragile complexity of existence. With a rare and limited oeuvre of about fifty works, each sculpture distills months or even years of observation and reflection, resulting in pieces that feel at once hyper-real and quietly enigmatic.

From April 29 to September 23, the Mori Art Museum hosts the artist’s first solo exhibition in Japan in eighteen years. Organised in collaboration with the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, the exhibition gathers eleven works tracing Mueck’s evolution, including six making their Japanese debut. Its monumental centrepiece is the Japan premiere of Mass (2016-17), an immersive installation of 100 giant skulls reconfigured to reflect the museum’s architecture. Other highlights include Angel (1997), Woman with Shopping (2013) and the iconic In Bed (2005), each inviting viewers into a deeply intimate emotional space.

Complementing the sculptures, photographs and films by Gautier Deblonde offer a glimpse into Mueck’s studio practice, revealing the quiet rigour behind some of contemporary art’s most affecting works.

Minami Tada (1924–2014) was a quietly radical figure in post-war Japanese art whose practice unfolded across sculpture, relief, lighting and architectural space. Working at the intersection of art, design and emerging industrial technologies, Tada developed a distinctive visual language that embraced transparency, reflection and light – materials and phenomena closely tied to Japan’s rapid economic growth. As a pioneering female artist operating in a male-dominated field, her work anticipated many later conversations around spatial perception and the expanded field of sculpture.

From August 29 to December 6, the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo presents the artist’s first solo exhibition in Tokyo in 35 years. This long-overdue retrospective traces the arc of Tada’s career, from early paintings to her most emblematic sculptural works, as well as large-scale pieces created for architectural settings. Drawing on industrial materials and contemporary technologies, her works explore how light interacts with form and space, producing effects that shift with the viewer’s movement.

The exhibition also includes archival materials that shed light on the artist’s process and intellectual context, situating her practice within broader developments in post-war Japanese art and design. At a moment when interest in overlooked modernist figures is growing both in Japan and internationally, ‘Still, shimmering light’ offers a timely reassessment of an artist whose work feels strikingly current. Elegant, experimental and forward-looking, the exhibition reintroduces Tada as a vital voice in the history of contemporary art.

A visionary who worked along the boundaries between art, design and everyday life, Ettore Sottsass (1917–2007) was one of the most influential figures in 20th-century Italian design. Rising to prominence in the 1950s through his groundbreaking work for the typewriter and computer manufacturer Olivetti, Sottsass redefined industrial design by infusing functional objects with emotion, symbolism and wit. His restless creative spirit culminated in the 1981 founding of the Memphis Group, an international collective whose bold colours, playful forms and radical aesthetics came to define post-modern design and reshape global visual culture.

‘Design begins where magic begins’ at the Artizon Museum is the first comprehensive retrospective of Sottsass’s work in Japan. Drawing from the Ishibashi Foundation’s extensive collection, the exhibition brings together 112 works spanning the entirety of its subject’s long and prolific career, from early experiments to later, more philosophical creations.

Through furniture, industrial design and conceptual works, the exhibition traces Sottsass’s lifelong challenge to strict rationalism and his belief that design should reflect the emotional and spiritual dimensions of human life. Humour, colour and sensuality emerge as tools with which he sought to illuminate the lived experiences, desires and contradictions of modern society. Offering a rare opportunity to encounter Sottsass’s work in depth, the exhibition reveals a visionary who insisted that true design begins with imagination and magic.