Hi, it’s me, Jonelle.
The TeamLab Borderless Digital Museum is the hottest ticket in Tokyo right now, but it’s also the great grandaddy of FOMO. There are no maps, and it’s designed to get you turned around so you “discover” instead of beelining to the thing you’re dying to see. The new Azabudai Hills site is even more opaque than the original, without so much as an identifying sign outside the mysterious entrance to each artwork.
Here’s how to see all the things and not miss any of the fun!
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Before you go…
Get your tickets online, in advance
Don’t think you can buy them at the door, because it’s timed entry now, and chances are they’ll be sold out of that time slot. Here’s the link to the website in English—just click on the TICKETS button in the top right corner. (You may have to move your cursor to the top of the screen to see it if you’re on a laptop.)
If Japanese isn’t your favorite language, click on the globe icon in the upper right corner to choose a language you’re more comfortable with.
The least crowded times are first thing in the morning and the last time slot at night.
The day before your ticket date, they’ll email you a reminder with a link to the QR code for entry. It’ll be for the total number of tickets you bought, but you can send it to other members of your group if you’re not coming together.
Download the app before you go
The TeamLab app lets you interact more with some of the exhibits, like the Crystal Universe. It’s not essential, but if you’d like to have the option, search your phone’s app store for this:
When you get to the Crystal Universe, you can choose an effect to send into the LED matrix. Just click and swipe to send it in that direction.
Note: Sometimes the wifi on site can get overloaded, so don’t take the risk of waiting to download the app after you’re inside. To be safe, do it beforehand.
Wearing white vs. wearing black
If you want to take pictures with the artwork flowing over you, wear the lightest color clothes you’ve got, or the projections won’t show up. (It also makes it easier to spot your companions in the dark if you’re wearing recognizable light clothing.)
Wear black if you want to be a silhouette with a face in the many selfies you won’t be able to resist taking.
Also, I see London, I see France, I see all your underpants. Don’t wear a skirt—the infinity rooms have mirrored floors. The staff can fetch you loaner shorts, but eww.
Eat a good breakfast
There’s no food sold inside the museum (except for the ¥1300 bowl of green tea ice cream at the En Tea House) and you can’t bring any in with you.
How to make sure you don’t miss anything
Borderless is designed to make you wander at will and discover each space as it unfolds beneath your feet—and if you can relax and do that, it really is the most fantastic way to experience the museum—but if you’re like me, and you’re anxious about not missing a single attraction, the corridors surrounding the central exhibits (the Flower Universe and Waterfall rooms) are your friend.
As you make your way along, keep a sharp lookout for doorways. Some will be covered with curtains, and they’re easy to miss. Go into every doorway as you encounter it, and you’ll see everything there is to see.
How to avoid standing in the longest lines
If you didn’t get tickets for 11:00 or earlier entry, ignore this. There will already be lines for the artworks with limited access. But if you get there early, it pays to see those rooms first.
The Bubble Universe
Each small group of visitors is only allowed inside the Bubble Universe for a short period of time.
Here’s how to find it: Inside the Borderless front door, walk into the Flower Universe, then ask an attendant where the exit is. (The one I’m thinking of will be off to the left of where you came in, if your back is to the entrance.) Find the door with the big EXIT sign in the corridor beyond, and turn your back to it. If you imagine that doorway as the lower left corner of a long rectangle, you’ll be shooting for the upper right corner as you make your way through the museum. Keeping the wall on your left to your left at all times, go all the way through the twisting corridors, passing all the curtained entries and alcoves along the way. When you get to the waterfall room, cut through it to the corridor moving along the right side. At the very end, you’ll see what looks like an impressionist flower painting through a door to your left (see below). Go through that door and keep turning corners until you find the entrance to the Bubble Universe.
Here’s how to find the Laser Vortex room: Most of the artworks are entered from the corridors surrounding the Flower Universe and Waterfall rooms, but the entrance to this one is in the Flower Universe.
Play with the art
Half the tech magic of this museum is that a lot of the artwork will respond to touch!
Here are the ones I know about:
• In the waterfall room, if you stand with your back up against the wall, the “falling water” will “splash” off your head, or if you hold your finger to the wall, the “water” will flow around it. If you look down, the “water” will eddy around your feet like you’re a rock in the stream.
• If you touch one of the swarms of butterflies as they move through the museum, some of them will fall to the ground. But if you’re in the Butterfly Room and touch one of the fabric-covered walls, a new flock will burst from your fingertips
• The falling Japanese characters in the Waterfall Room turn into the thing they represent if you touch them. (The character for “firefly” for example, turns into a swarm of fireflies.)
• The birds zooming over the floors and walls will turn into disintegrating chrysanthemums if you step on them or block them.
• The flowers blooming atop your tea at the En Tea Room will slo-mo explode into a widening flurry of petals every time you pick up the bowl and drink.
• If you touch one of the marching soldiers, frogs or oxen, they make noises.
• If you touch the flowers on the walls in the first Flower Universe rooms, they slo-mo break apart and scatter their petals
All of the artworks that roam throughout the museum will do something if you touch them, but I’ll leave the discovery of what each of them does (or the sound they make) for you to discover.
• There’s a room where you can color your own sea creature and watch it swim around inside Borderless. It’s not just for kids, and it’s free for everyone with a ticket to the museum.
If you discover more stuff, post it in the comments, so I can add it!
How to get your tea to explode
At the En Tea House, bouquets will slowly unfold on the surface of your tea bowl if you let it sit there on the table, but that’s all that will happen. If you want them to blow apart into a shower of petals, pick up your bowl and set it down again.
If you want nice pictures:
• Sip carefully and don’t disturb the layer of bubbles on top. The projection doesn’t reflect very well from the tea surface once they disappear.
• The flower projection will find your tea bowl wherever you set it in front of you, but it takes a moment.
Note: the projection focus is set for the tabletop, not the tea surface, so the exploding petals will look a lot sharper than the flowers in your tea.
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And finally, two general anxiety-reducing things:
They’ve got pretty decent free wifi everywhere in the building, so you can upload pix/videos & message your friends from any part of the museum. This not only makes it the most Instagrammable spot in Tokyo, it lets you relax a little about losing your friends inside. It IS really dark, and easy to get separated, so make sure everyone logs into the free wifi before you start exploring, so you can message each other if you have to.
The bathrooms are large and magnificent and not only have nice rest areas with seating and tea vending machines, there are lots of stalls, so even the ladies room doesn’t have too long a line. To find the nearest one, ask any of the staff posted in the rooms (they’ll be wearing black shirts with lots of writing on the back). Everyone speaks English.
Things I don’t love, so you can avoid them if you don’t love them either
• Flowery Smell-O-Vision: They pump a pungent rose fragrance into the Flower Universe rooms, so if you’re not a fan, speed through those rooms or revisit in short bursts. (Thankfully, it’s only in those rooms.)
• The three Laser Artworks Of Doom: The Light Sculpture vortex room is a must-see, but if you happen to arrive during the part of the cycle where they’re showing the three consecutive artworks paired with soundtracks that are 100% dread-inducing bass (the Pulsing Red Lasers Of Doom, the White Starbursts of Mounting Despair and the Colorless Nothingness Kill Me Now), either tough it out or come back later. Each one only lasts a few minutes, but it can seem like a lifetime.
• The Chamomile Latte at the En Tea Garden: Ugh, order something else. Anything else. Also, the staff may ask you to wait in the super-dark vestibule before seating you. What you’re supposed to do is sit on the bench, not blunder about checking the various curtains to see if that’s where you’re supposed to go. (Not that I know anyone who did that DON’T JUDGE.)
I hope these have been helpful to you, and that you leave Borderless loving it as much as I do!
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And here are the other places I take my friends when they come to town
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Jonelle Patrick writes novels set in Japan, produces the monthly e-magazine Japanagram, and blogs at Only In Japan and The Tokyo Guide I Wish I’d Had
Jonelle Patrick writes about Japan 