Free things to do in Tokyo this week

One of the largest in all of Tokyo, this lively Roppongi Hills festival features traditional Bon Odori dance by yukata-clad performers in the shopping centre’s event arena. Traditional Japanese lanterns add to the festive atmosphere while the surrounding food stalls cater to hungry crowds. You can expect a varied gourmet selection prepared by popular restaurants in the area, including Roppongi Barbacoa, Shinanoya, Rigoletto Bar and Grill, Grand Hyatt Tokyo, Gelateria Raffinato, and more. There will also be plenty of activities like yo-yo fishing, ring tossing, and a face mask stall for children and adults to enjoy. While there's no Bon Odori dancing on Friday, you’ll get to watch a modern interpretation of Gigaku (masked drama performance) and Dengaku (traditional Japanese dance) instead. The show is put on by Roppongi Raku, the venue’s performing arts group that consists of about 150 people, starting at 7pm.  Bon Odori dancing takes place on Saturday and Sunday from 5pm to 8pm.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government No 1 Building in Shinjuku serves as the backdrop for a jaw-dropping and record-breaking projection mapping show. Covering an area of a whopping 13,905sqm, the after-dark spectacle has been certified by Guinness World Records as the largest permanent display of its kind in the world. The nightly showcase features a range of visual wonders created by a mix of local and international artists. Some shows are inspired by Tokyo’s rich history, while others draw on themes like the lunar cycle.  Currently, on weeknights, you can catch striking visuals synchronised to ‘800’ and 'Zankyosanka' by hit Japanese pop singer and lyricist Aimer as well as ‘Pac-Man eats Tokyo’, ‘Lunar Cycle’, ‘Synergy’, ‘Tokyo Resonance’ and ‘Evolution’. On weekends, you can look forward to the aforementioned ‘Zankyosanka (Aimer)’, as well as ‘Godzilla: Attack on Tokyo’ and ‘TYO337’, a display featuring motifs of traditional Japanese performing arts such as Kabuki paired with electronic beats.  From March 20, Pokémon Trading Card Game ‘Tokyo Luminous Night’, a brand-new projection-mapping show featuring Pokémon cards on a massive scale, has been running on weekends and holidays from 6.30pm, 7.30pm and 9pm. Be sure to check the event website for more details. Shows take place every night at fifteen-minute intervals from 6pm (Mar from 6.30pm, 7pm from Apr, 7.30pm from May to Aug) to 9.45pm. For more details and to check the full programme of daily projection mapping shows,...

One of Tokyo's favourite traditional festivals, the annual Azabu-Juban Noryo Matsuri (‘noryo’ translates as 'cool of the evening') has been going on for over 50 years now. The festival is returning this year on August 22 and 23 at Patio Juban Square, the nearby Amishiro Park and along the streets of the fashionable Azabu-Juban shopping district.  There will be plenty of dancing, performances and live music, along with food and game stalls, some of which are set up by local businesses. While details for 2026 are yet to be announced, expect the nearby Juban Inari-jinja shrine to host an ohayashi festival music performance, accompanied by Ise Ondo folk dancing. Dust off your yukata and prepare to mingle among the crowds.  Visit the website for the festival map and programme.

Granted, it's a minnow compared to the Koenji Awa-Odori that takes place a week before, but Shimokitazawa's version of the famed dancing-in-the-streets fest (originally from Tokushima) has a unique charm of its own. Now into its 58th year, the two-day Shimokitazawa Awa-Odori sees 25 dance teams passionately romp along the neighbourhood's north-side main shopping streets in the evening, and dazzle the crowds with their special routines. Be sure to hang around afterwards, when the area is engulfed in a joyous party mood.Check the event website for the latest details.

Dafi Kühne works at the intersection of graphic design, craftsmanship and mechanical performance. At a moment when digital production and AI-generated imagery increasingly dominate visual culture, the Swiss designer has devoted himself to the tactile rigor of letterpress printing, transforming a centuries-old technique into a radically contemporary form of expression. This summer, Ginza Graphic Gallery showcases his distinctive process with ‘Dafi Kühne: Constructing Posters’, on view from July 14 to August 26. Far from nostalgic revivalism, Kühne’s practice pushes analogue printing into unexpected territory. Working from his studio in the Swiss Alps, he operates nearly forty tons of presses, metal type, woodblocks and custom-built tools to produce monumental posters by hand. His works often reach the scale of Swiss street posters, demanding an intense physical engagement with the machinery itself. Combining traditional techniques with self-engineered modifications and digital experimentation, Kühne treats printing not simply as reproduction, but as a performative and sculptural act. The exhibition traces this intricate process from conception to finished object. Alongside completed posters, visitors encounter printing blocks, typographic elements, handmade linocuts and material fragments that reveal the labour embedded within each image. The result is a meditation on the enduring expressive power of the human hand in an increasingly immaterial age, and an immersive...

The UNU farmers’ market is one of Tokyo’s longest running and best-attended markets. Taking place every weekend in front of the university’s Aoyama headquarters, this one always attracts a knowledgeable crowd. Organic and local fare is readily available every Saturday and Sunday from 10am to 4pm, with the farmers themselves happy to provide details about their wares. Plus, there's always a few food trucks on hand if you wish to enjoy a quick meal.

Born in Kolkata in 1963 and now based in New York, Rina Banerjee has established herself as a singular voice in the global contemporary art scene. Drawing from her experience of migration and diasporic identity, Banerjee creates intricate, richly layered sculptures and installations out of everyday materials like cotton threads, feathers, shells and glass chandeliers. Her practice, informed by both engineering training and fine art education at Yale, navigates the intersections of postcolonial history, feminism and global exchange, often infusing critical perspectives with a subtle, disarming sense of humour. ‘You made me leave home…’ at Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo is an exhibition of 19 works drawn from the collection of the Fondation Louis Vuitton. Organised as part of the foundation’s ‘Hors-les-murs’ programme, which brings major artworks to venues around the world, the exhibition marks both the 20th anniversary of the Espace Louis Vuitton and a decade of the ‘Hors-les-murs’ initiative. Spanning installation, sculpture and painting, the exhibition foregrounds Banerjee’s ongoing exploration of migration, colonial legacies and the circulation of people and objects. At its core is the monumental installation In an unnatural storm… (2008), presented publicly for the first time by the Fondation. Suspended from the ceiling in a cascading constellation of forms, the work evokes both the wonder and instability of global journeys, drawing inspiration from Jules Verne’s Around the...

Daniel Buren has spent more than six decades questioning where an artwork begins and where the surrounding world enters into it. Internationally renowned for his unmistakable 8.7cm vertical stripes, the French artist has transformed this seemingly neutral motif into a rigorous conceptual tool, using it to expose the architectural, historical and symbolic conditions of every site he inhabits. This spring and summer, Scai Piramide in Roppongi presents ‘Situated Works 1966-2013’, a rare survey spanning nearly fifty years of his practice. The exhibition traces Buren’s evolution from his early, radical interventions of the 1960s to luminous optical-fiber works produced in the 2010s. Historical pieces such as Peinture aux formes variables reveal the moment when the striped industrial fabric first became his defining visual language, while the Five Elements paintings, originally created for a 1989 exhibition in Nagoya, demonstrate his persistent dismantling of expressive authorship and painterly convention. In later galleries, Buren expands this inquiry through works integrating LED-lit optical fibers, where colour and light become spatial phenomena rather than fixed surfaces. Their shimmering presence underscores the artist’s long-held conviction that colour is the irreducible core of visual experience. Deeply connected to Japan, Buren here appears as an artist whose disciplined investigations continue to sharpen our perception of space itself.

After collaborating with JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure creator Hirohiko Araki in early 2025, Yebisu Beer and Ai Yazawa reunite this summer for a second collaboration. The project centres on new illustrations that reinterpret Yebisu Beer’s historic bijin-ga advertisements – early 20th-century beer posters featuring elegant portraits of women. Yazawa presents two new bijin-ga works reimagined through a contemporary lens and themed around summer evening festivals. The pieces will be exhibited at Yebisu Brewery Tokyo from July 8 to August 31. Visitors can also look forward to limited-edition merchandise featuring her artwork, including T-shirts, notebooks, fans and more.

Sangenjaya, known affectionately as Sancha among the locals, holds its annual Latin Festival with several performances throughout these two days. Enjoy some traditional festival food while taking in the live shows, amazing costumes and celebratory atmosphere. Of course, the highlight of the festival is the spectacular samba parade, which takes place on the second day (August 23) from 1.30pm to 4pm on Chazawa Street. Additionally, you'll find stage performances and outdoor food stalls over at Sangenjaya Fureai Square.