Things to do in Tokyo this week

The Moominvalley Park in Saitama is celebrating the autumn harvest festival with a spectacular balloon installation. The tree-lined boulevard leading to the theme park’s main area has been decorated with 3,600 colourful balloons, all in formations of apples and berries, the two fruits synonymous with the Scandinavian harvest season...

Tokyo has one of the best cocktail scenes on earth, with champion bartenders and watering holes that rank in the World’s Top 50 Bars. Tokyo Cocktail 7 Days is usually – as its name suggests – a week-long celebration of the flourishing local scene. However, the event this year will run for the entire month of October...

Visit Meiji Kinenkan’s spacious lawn to escape the concrete jungle and feast on the exclusive Halloween menu available only on weekdays during October. The resident chef will be cooking Japanese-French cuisine using seasonal ingredients, serving dishes like Japanese roast beef with autumn vegetables and matsutake mushroom and salmon. You’ll also find Halloween-themed cocktails and cakes to celebrate the spooky season...

Sanrio characters My Melody and Kuromi have their own cafe with a Halloween-themed menu in collaboration with cafe Egg & Spuma, located on the eighth floor of Shinjuku Lumine Est. The two-tier afternoon tea set features a cake of Kuromi dressed up as a witch, bat-shaped cookies, pumpkin mousse, mango pudding and many other delectable treats...

Tokyo’s newest miniature theme park Small Worlds is transforming its Global Village exhibit into a Halloween village until October 31. Get up close with small-scale reproductions of both real-world and fictional locations decked out with jack-o’-lanterns and tiny figurines dressed up in spooky outfits for the occasion. Come in costume after 5pm and get in for just ¥1,000 (middle school students ¥700, primary school students ¥500)...

Get into the Halloween spirit at Yumenoshima Tropical Greenhouse Dome’s annual pumpkin exhibition, where over 100 pumpkins from Ibaraki prefecture will be on display all over the garden. These pumpkins are much larger than the average Japanese kabocha, and can weigh up to 100kg each. Feel free to sit on them, take pictures and even roll them around...

Sumida Aquarium has transformed itself into a Halloween-themed seascape for the entire month of October. The 50m jellyfish hallway now features 5,000 mirrors covering the entire wall, complete with Halloween decorations and lighting, turning the entire space into a giant psychedelic kaleidoscope. During the day, the hallway will be lit in orange lights, while in the evenings after 6pm, it will be lit in red lights as a ‘Halloween horror tunnel'...

Asakusa’s old-school amusement park Hanayashiki will be celebrating Halloween until November 1 this year. Aside from seeing the park decked out in Halloween decorations and the stage performance featuring monsters and ghouls, you can catch some special events on weekends, including costumed creeps parading around the park and special holiday-themed games...

Tokyo has both inspired and served as the setting for countless works of manga and anime, video games and special effects-heavy tokusatsu movies. Setting out to explore the impact of the city on Japanese pop culture and the effects of that culture on how Tokyo is viewed and understood around the world, ‘Manga Toshi Tokyo’, which takes place under the auspices of the ongoing Japan Cultural Expo, approaches its theme by way of a remarkable 93 titles and more than 500 distinct items...

Visit this vampire’s lair in Ginza to celebrate Halloween with a spooky six-course, insta-worthy meal. At an affordable price of ¥3,500, you will get an eyeball-shaped blueberry cream cheese smorrebrod (a Danish open-faced sandwich) with prosciutto, chicken and carrot salad made to look like a jack-o-lantern, a garlic toast ‘mummy’, bacon and beet cream sauce pasta topped with black cat garnishes, pork belly simmered in red wine sauce, and a cherry and white chocolate mousse ‘ghost’ tart...

Indoor wildlife theme park Orbi Yokohama is celebrating Halloween this year with the help of some of the resident animals. Until November 4, you can take a photo with the 2m-long python (¥1,000), have a black-headed parrot pick out a tin badge for you to take home (¥300) or have one of the adorable cats fetch a gift from a capsule machine (¥300). On weekdays, you’ll be able to catch the spotted eagle owl’s flight training session for free, as well as meet a parakeet that will recite your fortune of the day (¥300)...

Head out to Tokyo Midtown Hibiya this autumn to watch some classic movies in memory of the old Hibiya Eiga Gekijou cinema, which closed 35 years ago. Now in its third year, the festival will be taking place outdoors to maintain social distancing. The festival includes old-fashioned Hollywood movies like Roman Holiday and Lawrence of Arabia, as well as more recent Japanese films like One Cut of the Dead and To the Ends of the Earth. Check the official website for screening times...

Wind down from a busy week at Tokyo Midtown’s open lawn and surround yourself with some greenery. There is plenty of space to sit down while social distancing here, with seating areas shaped like the different phases of the moon. It’s surprisingly quiet despite being located in central Tokyo, makes the perfect picnic place during the day and is a great star-gazing spot in the evening...

Tokyo Curiosity is the final exhibition of Tokyo-Ga, an art project started in 2011 and curated by Naoko Ohta. The exhibition asks 100 photographers from 16 different countries, including Daido Moriyama, Eikoh Hosoe, Ilse Leenders, Everett Kennedy Brown and César Ordóñez, to capture Japan’s capital through their eyes. Each of them has a distinctive style and perspective, encouraging the viewer to look carefully for what’s beautiful, sad or important – or even just what’s coming next – in each frame...

A celebration of art and culture set in the forest surrounding Meiji Shrine, this festival – co-presented by Japan Cultural Expo – zooms in on the relationship between nature and Japanese arts and culture with a diverse programme that will be going on until 2021. Held at Meiji Shrine itself, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary, as well as at various venues in the vicinity, the festival kicks off in March 2020 with ‘Tenkukaikatsu’, an open-air sculpture exhibition that features work by leading artists such as Kohei Nawa and Atsuhiko Misawa...

The Tokyo National Museum in Ueno is an essential visit for any visitor to Japan – you’ll learn about the history of Tokyo from feudal times to the present day. To celebrate Tokyo’s history, the museum is screening ‘A Glide on the Great Wave’, a 4K short film introducing Japanese history through the museum’s artefacts, with a backdrop of ukiyo-e woodblock paintings by Hokusai, including his most famous work, ‘The Great Wave off Kanagawa’...

Since 2007, Spanish photographer César Ordóñez has focussed on projects based in Tokyo, and one of those is his latest online exhibition 'La intimidad' (The Intimacy). Featuring 32 photos taken roughly ten years ago, the collection is free to view on the official YouTube channel of Cervantes Institute Tokyo, whose aim is to promote Spanish culture here in Japan.

The collection documents the unwritten rules and cultural aspects of Tokyo, including its silence and stillness. Ordóñez depicts this unexpected privacy and peace through photos of everyday situations that show an intimate respect for the thoughts, feelings and personal space of strangers. Although these photos were taken a decade ago, they take on a poignant new meaning during the current pandemic...

‘Nature of Change’ is a collaboration between ceramicist Sofia Solamente and photographer Yulia Skogoreva. Sofia and Yulia, both based in Tokyo but with different cultural backgrounds, explore the idea of change and the nature of movement through different mediums to reflect fragility, beauty and strength...

After a brief hiatus, the Yayoi Kusama Museum has reopened, and with it comes an exhibition of the artist's new and recent works which have never been displayed in Japan, or anywhere else in the world for that matter.

This showcase consists of works that were created by Kusama over the past decade, including her most recent one-metre square paintings, an immersive installation as well as a new Infinity Mirror Room...

Now you can enjoy your favourite children’s book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, with your taste buds at this pop-up café in Kichijoji Parco. Designed to look like a fruit parlor, you’ll get to eat the hungry caterpillar’s favourite fruits in both sweet and savoury dishes at the café. Order The Very Hungry Caterpillar Fruit Curry, which isa delectable pork curry made with fruits and tomato, topped with an apple, and accompanied by banana shaped rice...