Free things to do in Tokyo this weekend

One of Tokyo's biggest and best traditional festivals is back this year for three consecutive days. First held back in 1312, the event celebrates the three men who founded Asakusa's Sensoji Temple, and it often draws close to two million visitors.  The highlight of the festival comes on Sunday May 17, when three enormous mikoshi (portable shrines) are shuttled through the streets of Asakusa. Local residents usually take turns – and often fight each other for the chance – to carry them. Be sure to check the real-time route map (coming soon for 2026) to secure a good vantage point to see the mikoshi parade, which kicks off at 8am and continues on throughout the day until 6.30pm.  Saturday May 16 will feature the Chonai Mikoshi Rengo Togyo, where 100 or so mikoshi from 44 districts in the area are brought together to be purified at Asakusa Shrine, followed by a procession of priests, musicians and more. The gathering will take place behind Sensoji Temple's main hall from noon.  While Saturday’s and Sunday's events bring the most visitors, the main procession on Friday May 15 at 1pm may offer a better opportunity to photograph the mikoshi passing through the famous Kaminarimon gate, as there will most likely be smaller crowds. Do note that a slice of Japan that usually isn't that visible to visitors is in full view here. The festival is partially known (abroad) for the number of yakuza who attend and participate. If you notice a group of very heavily tattooed, often shirtless...

Window manufacturer YKK AP teams up with a number of prestigious Spanish institutions to highlight a small but crucial detail of Antoni Gaudí’s wide-ranging oeuvre. Zooming in on the role apertures played in the Catalan visionary’s singular architectural language, which was defined by organic forms, intricate ornament and a profound understanding of structure and light, ‘Windows on the Future’ forms part of a wider research initiative examining Gaudí’s creative methods. Organised to mark the centenary of Gaudí’s death, the exhibition at 21_21 Design Sight shares its concept with a more extensive presentation at Barcelona’s Palau Güell, a UNESCO World Heritage site, adapting it to the design-focused environment of Gallery 3. Through models, research materials and visual documentation, visitors are invited to explore Gaudí’s enduring ideas and consider how his inventive thinking may inspire the windows, and architecture, of the future.

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,...

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...

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.

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.

Suzuko Yamada is among the most compelling younger voices reshaping contemporary Japanese architecture. Known for spaces in which structures, objects, vegetation and human movement seem to collide and resonate rather than quietly harmonise, Yamada approaches architecture as a living environment charged with tension, rhythm and improvisation. ‘Parallel Tunes’ at Toto Gallery Ma is her first solo exhibition. The show introduces Yamada’s vision of architecture as polyphony – a vibrant field in which multiple forms, textures and functions assert themselves simultaneously. Stairs that zigzag across voids, curtains that descend like theatrical gestures, bookshelves that stretch across floors and unexpected bursts of colour all become independent ‘voices’ within a larger spatial composition. This sensibility was already evident in her acclaimed residence daita2019, and has since expanded into increasingly ambitious public works, including a rest facility for Expo 2025 Osaka Kansai. At Gallery Ma, Yamada transforms the exhibition into an environment rather than a retrospective display. Drawings, models, installations and spatial interventions evoke a world where nature, living beings, landscape and manufactured forms echo against one another in restless coexistence. Richly animated and defiantly unbalanced, ‘Parallel Tunes’ suggests that architecture today may be less about imposing order and more about orchestrating the noisy vitality of life itself.

Step into a world of vibrant chrysanthemums this spring at this free collaborative exhibition between teamLab and Galaxy. Now in its fifth year, the interactive, immersive space at Galaxy Harajuku uses cutting-edge projection mapping to depict flowers caught in an endless cycle of birth and death. Reach out to touch them and they’ll wither; stand still beside them and they’ll bloom more quickly. Look down and you’ll see flowing currents of gold beneath your feet – traces shaped by your very presence. The movements of others create their own currents, which intertwine and form swirling vortices. The result is a constantly shifting environment where no two moments are ever the same. The Galaxy store also invites visitors to capture these fleeting scenes using the foldable smartphones available at the venue.

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.

Gallery Koyanagi in Ginza presents a new series of collages by Christian Marclay, a pioneering figure in experimental music. Having started out using turntables and vinyl records as instruments before extending his practice into video, collage and installation, the California-born artist’s work interrogates how we perceive, construct and remember sound. Placing auditory experience at the centre of visual form, the artist’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery comes on the 40th anniversary of his first visit to Japan and continues Marclay’s long-standing engagement with sampling and recomposition. The exhibited works draw on fragments of popular culture – magazines, record sleeves, film imagery – reassembled through processes of cutting, layering and omission. In the Concentric Listening series, faces are reduced to hollow outlines, their ears preserved as points of entry into an otherwise absent interior. These nested forms ripple outward, suggesting listening as a cumulative, resonant act. Elsewhere, Oculi (Listening Trio) transforms record sleeves into apertures through which partial images emerge. In Marclay’s hands, collage becomes more than a technique: it operates as a metaphor for perception itself, where meaning arises through fragments, overlaps and echoes.