I am generally not one for hitting the super touristy, instagrammable spots on a vacation. You know me, I’m a regular guy! I like to mix it up with the real people, the locals. The last thing I want to do when abroad is be surrounded by a bunch of tourists who all look like me [insert tough guy emoji].
In any case, if you’ll excuse my hip, white boy, Anthony Bourdain wannabe bullshit, I use this preface to say that teamLab Planets is not the type of place I had ever been before nor expected to be at during this trip. But again and again, it kept popping up in my research as a can’t-miss experience. And so, day eight of our journey, already our third full day in Tokyo, brought us to teamLab Planets.
What is teamLab Planets? It’s a bit hard to explain and unfortunately, I fear my pictures and videos won’t do it enough justice. It is essentially a fully immersive art experience focused on the ways in which we engage with, and thereby change, the natural world. From their website:
teamLab Planets is a museum where you walk through water, and a garden where you become one with the flowers. It comprises 4 large-scale artwork spaces and 2 gardens created by art collective teamLab.
People go barefoot and immerse their entire bodies in the vast artworks together with others. The artworks change under the presence of people, blurring the perception of boundaries between the self and the works. Other people also create change in the artworks, blurring the boundaries between themselves and the works, and creating a continuity between the self, the art, and others.
Of course, the only way to truly get the experience is by partaking in it. But in lieu of that, I’ll at least recount our journey through the museum.
We started by dropping our belongings, including shoes and socks, into designated lockers. We did, of course, take our phones with us, which should save me some time and energy in having to describe everything. The museum follows an ordered path and so we started, like everyone else, at the beginning, by ascending through a beautifully lit water walkway, eventually reaching a lone waterfall at the top.
Next up is what I will call the Stalker room. Here, we bounded our way over a matted terrain that moved and changed with each body that passed across it. For those of you that have not seen Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979, slow burn masterpiece, I’ve included an image below for comparison. Please note, that there is certainly no actual connection between Stalker and this museum, I just happen to think about that film a lot.
After moving through the relative darkness of the previous two spaces, we emerged into an enormous, radiant, maze of crystal-like lights that continually changed in color and motion, eventually leading to a room full of large orbs. Here, I won’t even try to explain anymore and let the images do the talking.
Back to the water! To me, this was by far the coolest exhibit of the museum, a pond we got to wade through full of projections, lights, virtual flowers, and virtual koi!
The final exhibits in the museum all had a specific focus: flowers. We started in what felt like a planetarium, looking at projections of flowers and colors in space, moved through an alien-looking sculpture garden, and closed by literally sitting in a display in which flowers descended from the ceiling and surrounded you.
The irony in spending our morning in an immersive art gallery intended to celebrate nature was that when we returned outside, it was a spectacular day! It also happened to be Constitution Memorial Day in Japan, part of a collection of holidays celebrated as part of Golden Week. From the museum, we made our way to a public park nearby where all sorts of food stands and shops were set up along the water. It was a great spot to regroup, catch our breath, and of course, eat more sushi.
After relaxing at the park and refreshing back at our hotel, our evening plans were to finally see the world-famous Shibuya Crossing. This is a place where again, my photos will fail to capture everything we were able to see, specifically the enormity and chaos of the scramble. Nonetheless, it was well worth experiencing in person. If, however, merely walking the crossing is not adventurous enough for you, do note that you can Mario Kart your way through it. That seemed a little intense for us.
After taking in the sights it was, you guessed it, time for more sushi. Our spot for this evening was a conveyor belt sushi restaurant. Although many have popped up across the U.S., for those unfamiliar, the appeal of a restaurant like this is essentially that there’s as little human interaction as possible. You are seated at a bar with dividers separating you on all sides from your neighbors. To order, you simply select what’d you like to order on the touchscreen menu. And before you know it, a literal conveyor belt stops with the order right in front of you. You can even play a sushi roulette game to see if you win a free roll! Technology, man.
For me, this restaurant was particularly memorable for the fact that horse meat was not only one of the options but one that Gioia selected (a shocking crime considering our decorative wall of horses at home!). I, being less worldly than my partner, made the mistake of asking Gioia whether it was gamey. Stupid question she enlightened me, “Horse is not a game animal.” For myself, I played it safe with the classic miso soup, sushi, ice cream sundae combo.
As another full day was winding down, it was time for Gioia and I to pay tribute to two media legends. The first was my travel hero Anthony Bourdain who, in his Season 2 episode of Parts Unknown, stops by Bar Albatross. Being nearby, we had to do the same.
Our last hero needs no introduction, he’s your favorite Kaiju and mine, everybody give it up for Godzilla! We were quite pleased with our hotel on the trip, but if one of the rooms next to the lizard’s head is available next time, you know where I’ll be booking.
Sam Writes Shit 