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Old 4 Jan 20, 11:43 PM  
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Gr8WideSomewher
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When you gachapon a star: Tokyo Disney and Japan 2019 - Day 8

Two in one day! Aren't you lucky

Day 8: teamLab Borderless Digital Art Museum wow wow wow!

We had a lie in till 8:00 today, which was very welcome. I woke up a bit early and spent the time tending to my feet. I had blisters coming in now as well as the regular pain, but luckily, I am an expert at dealing with blisters.

We showered and then dressed carefully. We were going to what I called ‘The Light Museum’ for most of the trip, but is in fact called Teamlab Borderless. It’s one of the things that everybody says you should try to catch if you go to Tokyo, and Bex had read that if you want to take good pictures, you need to wear white, or light-coloured clothing. So Bex wore white shorts and a white top, and I wore pale blue and pink.

It was a long journey to the museum. First, we took the underground and then switched to the overground at about 9:30. We had the usual difficulty finding the line we wanted – even with Google maps it was quite difficult. I can’t imagine how difficult it would be trying to do Tokyo without the internet!




The museum opened at 10:00 and we arrived a few minutes early. We therefore went to Starbucks for an iced latte and an iced mocha before joining the queue exactly at 10:00. We were the second group to be let into the museum – they let people in in groups, so it’s not too crowded in any of the areas.

From this point on this report is mostly going to be pictures I’m afraid. Everywhere in the museum was in darkness, meaning it was impossible to take notes. We did, however, take literally hundreds of pictures, because this was possibly the most beautiful museum/art installation I have ever been to. It’s essentially a series of light installations, some of which are interactive. You wander from area to area just sort of taking it all in. None of the installations are static, so if you walk back through an area another time, you’ll almost certainly see something different, and you might find some of the displays following you from room to room. They take inspiration from all sorts of things – mostly nature, but also things like art works and video and arcade games.

There’s a couple of rooms that you have to queue for, as they don’t want them to become too crowded and ruin the experience, and there’s also a couple that are for children only, but most of it you just wander around freely getting lost in all the beauty.

We spent four hours in there, and these were just some of the areas that we wandered through:

The flower forest
The flowers on the walls were constantly swirling around and changing. Sometimes they would collide into each other and explode in a shower of petals.












The light shell
The beams came from all over the room and converged and changed colours.








The crystal world
This was essentially like a rain of lights. It was also a bit of a maze, so we wandered through and got lost while the lights changed around us.






The forest of resonating lamps
This was one of the rooms you had to queue for – I would recommend getting there early so you don’t have to queue for too long. This was one of my favourite rooms. There were mirrors all around and in the floor, so you could see the lamps, in all their changing colours, from all different angles.













The memory of topography
The floor in this room was uneven, so sometimes the plant-like lights were at knee height and sometimes they were as tall as us.







Black waves
This room was obviously inspired by the Great Wave. You could sit or lie down in the middle of the room and watch the waves on the wall. Or you could lean up against the wall and have them sort of washing over you. It was gorgeous.






The athletics forest
This was one of the fun, interactive bits, but you weren’t allowed to take pictures for safety’s sake. You were challenged to climb through the forest, not touching the ground, and only stepping on lights of one colour. It was really hard – a bit like rock climbing. The further you got into the forest, the fewer lights of your colour there would be.




The other interactive bit was sort of giant video games made of light.


This is me sliding

This was a sort of building game.


The weightless forest of resonating life
This was essentially a lot of big balloons that you pushed through and which bounced back at you – like an inflatable at the pool.







The nest
This was another bit you needed to queue for – again my tip would be to arrive early and go here first. We queued for a good 25 minutes for this room, and it was good, though maybe not worth such a long queue. It was a sensory experience, where we lay in a net suspended above the ground, and then watched lights changing above us. I think there was music too.

Animals of flowers
This was one of our favourite installations. It was spread over a wide area, and you could see all kinds of different animals, some of which were life-size and bigger than life-size. They also didn’t stay in one place of course, so you’d see a giant giraffe made of flowers walking from room to room. Our favourites were the whales, and, as you can see, I spent a long time photographing Bex with this whale that kept swimming past her.








There were also quite a few installations that didn’t stay in one area, and so didn’t seem to have a particular name. One of my favourites was this group of old-fashioned musicians who wandered around playing snatches of songs and mumbling – they were so cute.







They eventually disappeared in an explosion of flower petals.





And then these bunnies appeared - don't ask me to explain it.

We both took tonnes of pictures, as you can see – though I’m not sure if the pictures in any way do it justice.





If you want to get good pictures, it’s definitely worth getting there when the museum opens. It definitely got busier over time, and of course people started being a little less considerate of one another as the areas got more crowded, but for the most part people were really nice and would make way for each other, and wait for each other to take pictures etc. It was a good atmosphere inside – though it did get quite hot as it got busier.

When we finally left the museum, we found queues to get in that looked like they would be hours long. This museum is not to be missed – but you really really do need to get there early.


This was genuinely the queue.

We finished in the museum round about 14:00 and went to find some lunch. There were a few places around (the museum is next to a shopping centre) but we didn’t want anything big, so we decided to get a sandwich from Starbucks. The one we’d been to in the morning was extremely full, so we found a different one, which was slightly less busy. The queue to get food and drink wasn’t too long but finding somewhere to sit afterwards took at least 10 minutes. We bought a sandwich each and I got a delicious frozen mango tea drink. Bex wouldn’t buy one because it had tea in the title (she loathes tea – the heathen!) but when I made her try a bit of mine, she really liked it and wished she’d bought one. The sandwiches weren’t bad, but we’d had better.

While we sat and ate, I took the opportunity to write up my notes.

When we’d finished lunch, we had a look around the shopping centre. We found a Sylvanian Families store, which we spent ages in. We loved Sylvanian Families when we were little – Japan really is the place for 80s and 90s nostalgia! Next door to the Sylvanian Families shop was a puzzle shop which we also enjoyed exploring. We’re not really puzzle people, but there were some really beautiful Disney and Studio Ghibli puzzles. As usual, no pictures were allowed inside the shops.





We caught a different train back into the city, as we were going to Tokyo Station, rather than to our nearest underground. We arrived in Tokyo Station about 15:45 and picked up our train tickets for the following day (we were heading to Osaka) and then walked back to our hotel.

As usual, navigating the station was a bit of a faff, so we didn’t get back to the hotel until 17:15, by which time my feet were burning! I knew that the pain was only going to get worse throughout the rest of the holiday, which made me feel really down. Bex was very nice about it though and said we should just take it easy for the rest of the evening. She didn’t even make me come with her to the 7-Eleven to pick up food for tea. She brought back a feast of sandwiches, salads and fruit, which was all pretty good, and we ate it watching Netflix – Stranger Things Season 3 had just come out!

We finished most of our packing and then turned out the lights just before 11. I forgot to write down the step count, but I don’t think it was a particularly heavy one.

That's all for now, friendos - see you next time!
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Old 5 Jan 20, 04:58 PM  
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Sparksy72
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Your photos inside the art museum are incredible, getting there early is a great tip. What a great day!
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Old 6 Jan 20, 05:44 AM  
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AntonyJ
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Loved the light / art museum too - but you found some rooms we never did!

The flowers and walking musicians - did you stroke them and have them react to you?
There was a flower tiger that walked through and if you stroked it, the area you touched exploded into flowers. The musicians, if you touched them they would turn to look at you - it was all so clever!
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Old 6 Jan 20, 10:05 AM  
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Rae21
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Is the Teamlab Borderless the one at Odaiba? One of the hotels I’m looking to stay at is nearby so wondered if it might get quieter later on as we’d be in walking distance or is it still better to get in early?
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Old 6 Jan 20, 10:41 AM  
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Gr8WideSomewher
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Originally Posted by Sparksy72 View Post
Your photos inside the art museum are incredible, getting there early is a great tip. What a great day!
It was, thank you! Thanks for reading
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Old 6 Jan 20, 10:45 AM  
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Gr8WideSomewher
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Originally Posted by AntonyJ View Post
Loved the light / art museum too - but you found some rooms we never did!

The flowers and walking musicians - did you stroke them and have them react to you?
There was a flower tiger that walked through and if you stroked it, the area you touched exploded into flowers. The musicians, if you touched them they would turn to look at you - it was all so clever!
Yes we did! You could also make the musicians change direction and then they all started bumping into each other and mumbling even louder. It was v funny.

I think there was also a similar effect with the bunnies where if they bumped into each other they started multiplying

It's an amazing museum - I wish we had one here in the UK.
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Old 6 Jan 20, 10:49 AM  
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Gr8WideSomewher
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Originally Posted by Rae21 View Post
Is the Teamlab Borderless the one at Odaiba? One of the hotels I’m looking to stay at is nearby so wondered if it might get quieter later on as we’d be in walking distance or is it still better to get in early?
Hiya - yes that's the one. I'm not sure to be honest. The queues were definitely building up throughout the day and I think it would take a good while to clear them. Also, I'd say you're going to want a good long time in the museum if you decide to go, so getting in early might still be the best option. I could be wrong though.

Have fun!
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Old 25 Jan 20, 05:28 PM  
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I could kick myself that I had no idea what this was when we went in 2018. We loved Odaiba and did the car museum, Venus fort and my son won a huge ham looking thing in the arcade lol. This is definitely on the list this time
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Old 27 Jan 20, 02:44 PM  
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Originally Posted by happytraveller View Post
I could kick myself that I had no idea what this was when we went in 2018. We loved Odaiba and did the car museum, Venus fort and my son won a huge ham looking thing in the arcade lol. This is definitely on the list this time
I hope you have a wonderful trip! Yes, this was incredible - I've never seen anything like it!
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Old 3 Feb 20, 08:57 PM  
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The Light museum looks magical, one of my children has autism and this will be amazing for him. Definitely another for my list!
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