Things to do in Tokyo today

The Marble Lounge at the Hilton Tokyo is hosting a dessert buffet inspired by nostalgia as well as a psychedelic vision of the future. Called the ‘Sweets Time Machine’, the all-you-can-eat spread features old-school cakes, pastries and light meals that will appeal to our fond childhood memories. The lounge will be transformed in matching fashion, with bold, bright colours to create an inviting, atmospheric setting that befits the theme. You can expect 20 kinds of sweet treats made with summer fruits including melons, peaches and mangoes, among others. The buffet features classic chocolate mint cupcakes with blue frosting, chocolate-coated éclairs filled with passion fruit ganache, almond mousse with shine muscat grapes and jelly, coconut-coated cheese soufflé topped with tropical fruits, strawberry chocolate mousse with ruby grapefruit confiture, genoise cake with watermelon confiture and Campari liqueur-flavoured yoghurt mousse, and many other delectable creations. Don’t sleep on the ice cream selection either. There are five flavours to choose from, including mango and chocolate mint, plus a host of old-school sundae-inspired toppings such as gummy bears, crackle candies and fruit sauces. You’ll also get to enjoy Korean bingsu, the perfect dessert for summer. It’s not all just sweets, though. Complementing the desserts are seven savoury options to help balance out the sweetness. These light dishes are equally nostalgic, including Japanese-style napolitan spaghetti, potato s

Go on a floral outing this summer to enjoy the sight of over 20,000 hydrangeas at the 24th annual Hakkeijima Hydrangea Festival. Held for roughly three weeks from June 1 to June 23, this free event lets you explore the island of Hakkeijima (about 30 minutes by train from Yokohama) and its eight hydrangea spots. Highlights include the indigenous Hakkei-blue hydrangea, a variety that was created to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the island’s Hakkeijima Sea Paradise theme park. Collect stamps from at least five of the eight hydrangea spots and you’ll receive a ¥500 voucher to use at the nearby Mitsui Outlet Park Yokohama Bayside shopping mall.   Whenever you need to rest your feet and recharge, restaurants across the island are serving special flower-themed drinks and desserts. The most eye-catching of them all is the hydrangea lemon tea (¥500) sold at Cable Car Coffee. Stamp rally is held daily from 10am-4pm

As the weather starts to warm up, there’s no better place to enjoy an ice cold beer and Tokyo skyline views than Hilton Tokyo’s Beer Garden in the Sky. This gorgeous open-air terrace and bar is situated on the hotel's seventh floor and offers stunning views of Shinjuku along with a tempting selection of food and drinks. This season’s beer garden has taken inspiration from the summers of Ibiza and features a resort-like atmosphere where you can enjoy a selection of authentic tapas and pintxos (small snacks) along with a range of drinks from Spain. Looking to make the most of the beer garden? Opt for the free-flowing drink plan complementing the gourmet offerings which includes a selection of five draft beers, Spanish red and white wines, sparkling wine, soft drinks, tropical beverages and cocktails made with Spanish gin.  Keeping with the Ibiza theme, chef Mateu Villaret of Masia in Ginza – renowned for its Catalan cuisine – has come up with an impressive menu featuring traditional Spanish delights such as spice-infused 'Pincho de Cerdo Moruno' pork skewers, 'Pan con Tomate y Jamón’ toast with tomato and Spanish ham, and 'Bunuelo de Bacalao’ fried bread served with dried cod. In a nod to Ibiza's stylish clubbing culture, the beer garden also puts on a lineup of exciting DJ performances every Friday and Saturday night to liven up the atmosphere. To make a reservation, visit the website.

The Tokyo Contemporary Art Award, established in 2018, is a prize intended to encourage mid-career artists to make further breakthroughs in their work by providing winners with several years of continuous support. Here, the two winners of the award’s fourth edition each present shows that, despite their creative diversity, both involve visitors and their actions becoming key elements of the art. Through this, both shows lead audiences to examine their relationships: with fellow humans, animals, and society’s expectations. Saeborg, born in 1981 and based in Tokyo, creates and performs as a latex bodysuit-clad ‘imperfect cyborg, half human and half toy’ that enables the female behind this guise to transcend such characteristics as age and gender. Here Saeborg presents ‘I Was Made for Loving You’, for which a section of the venue has been transformed into a life-sized toy farm. Visitors will experience a highly immersive installation-performance that transcends the boundaries between the body and synthetic materials, and between human and animal. Michiko Tsuda (born in 1980 and working in Ishikawa prefecture) presents ‘Life is Delaying’, an installation that uses video to explore the notion of physicality. The work recreates the private world experienced by a family at home through the perspective of someone operating an old-school video camera. The piece was inspired by Tsuda’s childhood memory of a video camera appearing in her family residence. Here, fictitious documentation

Step into an enchanted digital forest in this collaborative exhibition between teamLab and Galaxy. Now in its third iteration, the interactive experience is based on the concept of catching different digital creatures to study them before releasing them back into their habitat. As it's a digital art experience, you'll be using an app on the Galaxy smartphone to collect different prehistoric animals in the mystical forest. Be gentle when approaching these critters! If you try to touch them they might run and disappear into the forest. If you're lucky, they might become curious instead and turn towards you. Nevertheless, the exercise here is to point your phone camera at them, release a Study Arrow in their direction, and capture them onto your screen so that you can learn more about their nature. You can also work together with other visitors and shepherd the dinosaurs projected on the floor. This allows you to then deploy the Study Net and capture them into your phone. Once you've done studying them, you can release them back into the space. While the exhibit is free, reservations are required so as to avoid overcrowding the venue. Each session is an hour long, with the exhibition open from 11am until 7pm daily. You can book a timeslot as early as three days in advance via the event website.

Tokyo Tower's alternative to the ubiquitous summer beer gardens is welcoming the outdoor drinking season with a double dose of whisky highballs. Head to the terrace at the base of the tower for a lengthy menu of highballs combined with a variety of drinking snacks (think karaage and grilled bacon). There's also a meatier option on the roof of the Tower Foot Town building. The Tokyo Tower Rooftop Highball Garden serves up all-you-can-eat jingisukan, the Hokkaido-born lamb barbecue named after the Mongol warlord Genghis Khan. Two hours of all-you-can-drink alcohol and limitless jingisukan can be had for ¥5,800 (teens aged 13-19 ¥3,800, primary school students ¥2,800, children aged 4-6 ¥1,800, all with non-alcoholic drinks, of course). The Tokyo Tower Cho-Ten Highball Garden at the base of the tower is open until October 6, from 4pm-10pm on weekdays and 12noon-10pm on Sat, Sun & holidays. The Tokyo Tower Rooftop Highball Garden is open until October 14, from 5pm-9.30pm daily. Make your reservations here.

Craft, creativity, heritage and modernity all converge in this immersive visual journey through the 187-year history of American jewellery maestros Tiffany. Within the gallery space of Tokyo Node, situated in the soaring Toranomon Hills Station Tower complex, ten rooms are filled with hundreds of captivating creations that range from one-of-a-kind items to iconic accessories that has become part of popular culture. One standout amongst many is the very first iteration of Tiffany’s emblematic ‘Bird on a Rock’ brooch. This was conceived by longstanding Tiffany designer Jean Schlumberger, whose work for the brand won over clients including actresses Audrey Hepburn and Greta Garbo. As with many of Schlumberger’s works, this magnificent nature-themed piece reminds us that, for all of their luxury and glamour, diamonds are ultimately something derived from the earth itself. The exhibition also explores Tiffany’s relationship with Japan, which stretches back to the company’s earliest days. Many designers closely associated with Tiffany, including Elsa Peretti and Edward Chandler Moore, took inspiration from traditional Japanese arts, making ‘Tiffany Wonder’ a spiritual homecoming for some of the featured works. Tickets are available online. The exhibition is closed on the following dates: April 17 (5pm-8pm), April 22 (6.30pm-8pm), April 30 (5pm-8pm), May 8 (11.30am-1pm, 5pm-8pm), May 13 (6pm-8pm), May 16 (6pm-8pm).

From now until June 23, you can catch hydrangeas blooming in one of Tokyo’s most picturesque Japanese gardens. Rikugien is currently celebrating the onset of summer with approximately 1,000 hydrangeas of 15 varieties.  The highlight of the event is arguably the mountain hydrangeas, an elegant variant of the species that has bloomed on the Japanese archipelago since ancient times. These flowers may not have the conventional appearance of a common hydrangea, but they are still beautiful in their own right while being of modest colour and size. At the garden you’ll also find the vibrant pink Satsuki azaleas, which are also native to the mountains of Japan. Entrance to Rikugien costs ¥300 (free for primary students and younger). Posters explaining the different varieties of hydrangea will have both Japanese and English text.

Taking over the expansive outdoor lawn within the children’s play area at Meiji Shrine’s Outer Gardens, the Forest Beer Garden distinguishes itself from other boozy events in town with its lush green surrounds and bubbling waterfall. The popular two-hour all-you-can-eat (¥5,880) option includes everything from barbecue beef, pork and lamb to veggies, yakisoba noodles, grilled onigiri and even ice pops. It includes an all-you-can-drink selection of seven kinds of beers including Kirin and Heineken, in addition to whisky, sours, wine and soft drinks. Despite being one of the largest beer gardens in Tokyo with a capacity for around 1,000 people, the event can get extremely busy at weekends, so advance bookings are recommended via the website.

The rooftop of Lumine Shinjuku has transformed into a beer garden where you can watch movies curated by Cinema Caravan, also known as the organisers of the annual Zushi Film Festival. You can choose from three kinds of cuisines – American, Korean or Mexican barbecue courses, all offered in light (from ¥5,390), standard (from ¥5,940) and premium (from ¥6,490) plans. The World Trip BBQ Premium Plan offers a taste of all the cuisines in one course, for ¥7,590. The all-American course comes with classic beef short ribs, pork, jerk chicken and sausage, accompanied with condiments like buffalo sauce, magic mustard and Kansas City barbecue sauce. The Korean course, on the other hand, features a one-centimetre-thick slab of samgyeopsal (pork belly), beef short rib, scallops, kimchi and four kinds of dips including dadaegi miso and yangnyeom (sweet and spicy) sauce. The Mexican course comes with beef, jerk chicken, pork, as well as seafood options like scallops, salmon and shrimp, and a side of guacamole. All courses come with 90 minutes of all-you-can-drink beverages from a list of 160 cocktails and soft drinks.