Free things to do in Tokyo this weekend

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,...

Tokyo’s Kameido Tenjin Shrine is famous for its wisteria flowers, and with good reason – the shrine has over 50 wisteria trees, which usually reach their flowering peak between mid-April and early May.  This annual festival features a handful of food stalls and an evening wisteria light up (from sundown to 9pm). The purple blooms also look quite stunning during the day, when you can get a spectacular view of Tokyo Skytree in the background. The shrine is in the shitamachi (old downtown) part of Tokyo, so while you’re there, make sure to take a stroll around the area to explore the old-fashioned local shops and eateries. To check the current flowering status, visit the shrine's Instagram.

The Kurayami Matsuri, or ‘darkness festival’, is a week-long event at the Okunitama Shrine out in Fuchu. The festivities take place throughout Golden Week, with float parades, performances and lots of family-friendly fun. We recommend visiting on the evening of May 5, when eight mikoshi (portable shrines) are carried through the shrine grounds to the beat of huge taiko drums from 6pm to 9pm. Don’t miss the spectacular yabusame (horseback archery) demonstration at 10.30pm on the same day. Check the full programme details (in Japanese) on their website. 

One of Tokyo’s largest koinobori festivals takes place at the foot of Tokyo Skytree, with 1,000 carp streamers fluttering in the air. The traditional koinobori carp streamers are put up to celebrate Children’s Day, which happens every May 5 during Golden Week.  If you visit the fifth-floor Block 12 event space near Space 634, children can participate in a fun workshop to colour their own koinobori with guidance from carp streamer artisans for ¥500 (April 11-12). Additionally, other activities will also be taking place at venues around Tokyo Skytree Town, including a Taiwanese food festival, a workshop to make full-length embroidered carp streamers at Kyototo, and a carp streamer candy sculpting workshop at the Asakusa Amezaiku Ameshin store.

The colourful Children’s Day koinobori carp streamers are an annual sight at Tokyo Tower, and this year you can see them at the main entrance from March 18 through Golden Week until May 6. There are 333 streamers set-up here, signifying the 333m height of the iconic tower.  Among the 333 streamers, there's one that's not a carp – see if you can spot the 6-metre-long sanma (Pacific saury) nobori. This unique inclusion is Tokyo Tower's way of sending hope to the region affected by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. As this display is held right outside the tower on the ground level, you don't need a ticket to see this joyous sight.  

The first display of its kind in Japan to comprehensively explore the history and cultural significance of sign design, ‘Grand Sign Exhibition’ at the Tokyo Midtown Design Hub turns the spotlight on a discipline fundamentally embedded in daily life. Organised by the Japan Sign Design Association, the exhibition traces the evolution of signs from postwar Japan to the present day, highlighting their expanding role as complex agents of social connection. At its core is a large-scale presentation structured around eleven thematic contexts, through which 77 landmark projects are examined using photographs, videos, models and mock-ups. Complementing this historical overview, the ‘Material-tone’ section offers a more experimental perspective, showcasing how ten companies reinterpret a single arrow motif through diverse materials and technologies. Meanwhile, a special display dedicated to the late graphic designer Takenobu Igarashi features iconic signage created for Parco, including a neon installation. Bridging design, technology and urban experience, the exhibition reveals how signage shapes the way we perceive and inhabit contemporary space.

Robert Longo has long turned the visual noise of contemporary life into images of monumental intensity. Best known for his hyperreal charcoal drawings that magnify the political, cultural and emotional charge of mass-media imagery, the New York-based artist has spent four decades probing the fractures beneath American power, spectacle and mythology. Now, after an absence of thirty years, he returns to Japan with ‘Angels of the Maelstrom’, on view at Pace Gallery Tokyo until June 17. This new solo exhibition gathers recent drawings and sculptures shaped by Longo’s enduring dialogue between Japan and the US. Across Pace’s two floors, allegorical images of crashing waves, submerged whales, tigers, mountains and blooming peonies unfold beside portraits of 20th-century American icons, creating a charged visual field where natural force and historical memory collide. At the centre stands Untitled (American Samurai), a monumental depiction of Shohei Ohtani, whom Longo sees as a living emblem of cultural convergence: a Japanese athlete redefining America’s national pastime. The exhibition’s title draws on Angelus Novus, Paul Klee’s haunting image of an angel suspended between surrender and flight, later interpreted by Walter Benjamin as history’s helpless witness. Longo adopts this figure as a lens through which to view the present maelstrom of violence, media saturation and uncertain futures.

Andrius Arutiunian (born 1991) is an Armenian-Lithuanian artist and composer whose practice unfolds at the intersection of sound, ritual and speculative cosmology. Working across installation, performance and moving image, he approaches listening as a hybrid and political act, treating music as an architecture of distorted time. His work, shown at major international exhibitions including the Venice, Shanghai, Gwangju and Lyon Biennales, explores how belief systems, vernacular knowledge and collective rituals shape alternative models of social and temporal order. ‘Obol’, Arutiunian’s first solo exhibition in Japan, takes place from February 20 to May 31 at Le Forum. Presented by Ginza Maison Hermès and curated by Tomoya Iwata, the exhibition imagines a futuristic vision of the underworld, a speculative space where myth, sound and ceremony converge. Drawing on ancient cosmologies, esoteric texts and fragments of ritual, ‘Obol’ is conceived as a ‘club for the dead’, where time becomes viscous and hypnotic, and where the boundaries between past, present and future dissolve. Central to the exhibition is a new body of work using bitumen, a petroleum-derived material once imbued with sacred meaning but now relegated to utilitarian use. As both material and metaphor, it anchors a meditation on Charon, the ferryman of the underworld, evoked through silver obols, serpentine forms and generative mythological imagery. Layered soundscapes weave through the space, binding playfulness...

Hirohiko Araki began serialising JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure in Weekly Shonen Jump in 1986, launching a saga that has since spanned decades, generations of protagonists and shifting aesthetic paradigms. Renowned for its flamboyant characters, bold compositions and philosophical undercurrents, JoJo stands apart for its synthesis of classical art, fashion, music and pop culture. With cumulative circulation exceeding 120 million copies, the series has become a global phenomenon, while Araki himself has become recognised as a singular figure bridging manga and contemporary art. From January 8 to June 28, the Shueisha Manga-Art Heritage Tokyo Gallery presents this three-part exhibition that foregrounds Araki’s work through the lens of fine-art printmaking. The exhibition has previously been shown in San Francisco and Kyoto, but this marks the first time Araki’s lithographs and lenticular works are displayed in Tokyo. To allow visitors to encounter as wide a variety of works as possible, the exhibition unfolds in three rotations: Part 1 (January 8–February 23), Part 2 (March 3–April 19) and Part 3 (April 28–June 28). At the heart of the display are nine lithographic prints, produced in 2025 at the request of Shueisha Manga-Art Heritage and representing Araki’s first foray into lithography. Unlike conventional manga printing, which reduces drawings to stark black-and-white data, lithography preserves the artist’s hand with remarkable fidelity. Drawing directly onto metal plates with...

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.