Things to do in Tokyo this week

Dougu Matsuri is an annual festival held in October in Kappabashi, the wholesale district between Ueno and Asakusa that specialises in tools and kitchen supplies for the restaurant industry. Known affectionately as Tokyo's Kitchen Town, many shops here also welcome home cooks and the general public as you can also purchase items individually.

Over 100 stores will be participating in the event, where you’ll find great deals on cooking utensils, tableware, food samples and more. While the festival officially runs for a week, most of the festivities will be held on October 12. Highlights include a local elementary school marching band parade (11am), wadaiko drumming performances by local junior and senior high school students (1pm and 3.30pm), kung-fu and taiko stage shows (10.30am in front of Taito Ward Life-long Learning Center and 2.30pm in front of Keisei Coop Apartments), cheerleading performances (2pm) and food trucks serving regional dishes from across Japan (Oct 11 & 12).

Check the event website and performance schedule for more details.

The charming neighbourhoods of Nezu and Sendagi flaunt their shitamachi (downtown) roots at this autumn festival, which marks its 28th edition this year. The action centres around Nezu Shrine, which is hosting concerts and performances throughout the weekend, accompanied by a flea market and stalls selling traditional goods.

The rest of the neighbourhood follows suit, with attractions including performances of traditional Japanese music and various dances at the Fureai-kan community centre on Shinobazu-dori. You can also take part in a stamp rally: pick up a stamp sheet and map at Nezu Shrine, tour the eight designated spots to fill up your sheet, and return it to the starting point for the chance to win prizes which include a round-trip ticket to Hagi-Iwami Airport in Shimane prefecture, pair vouchers for Spa Laqua, Tokyo Dome City amusement ride tickets, and more.

The second instalment of the two-part Fukuro Matsuri will see over 100 teams of yosakoi dancers from across Japan parading through the streets of Ikebukuro.

Taking over the neighbourhood on October 10 and 11, the performers will show off their well-choreographed dances in modern neon reinterpretations of happi coats and yukata for an elaborate show. The yosakoi dance itself originated in Kochi prefecture in 1954, where it was invented to help revitalise the struggling post-war economy.

This massive event will take place across six venues on the west side of Ikebukuro Station, including the main stage in front of the Tobu Department Store, the rooftop of the department store and the Global Ring Theatre (Ikebukuro West Gate Park). If you only have time for a quick look, head to Azalea Street, the main boulevard leading in the direction of the station. There you’ll be able to see non-stop performances with few obstructions to ruin your view.

Check the event website for event schedules and more.

Oeshiki, the festival commemorating the anniversary of Buddhist saint Nichiren's death, is the annual highlight at the majestic Ikegami Honmonji, the place where this holy honcho is said to have drawn his last breath, and attracts around 300,000 people each year. With origins reaching back more than 700 years, this one's got both tradition and spectacle, especially in the form of Monday evening's mando procession that sees around 3,000 participants carry elaborate lanterns along the two-kilometre route from Ikegami Station to the temple (from 6pm). The festivities go on until late at night, ensuring an electric atmosphere.

Tachikawa's Showa Kinen Park has the most impressive fields of cosmos flowers in Tokyo and this is the ideal time to see them all in full bloom. The hilly grasslands of the park are usually draped in colour from mid-September with various types of cosmos flowers, and the multicoloured scenery can be enjoyed well into mid-October.

There are three main gardens: The Lemon Bright field, which is covered in vivid yellow sulfur cosmos; Autumn Bouquet Garden, which has a mixture of 20 different cosmos; and the Cosmos Sensation filled with lilac blooms.

Don't miss the picturesque soap bubble event, where you can see countless small bubbles floating over the flower gardens. This special spectacle happens twice a day from 10.30am and 12noon on September 12 at the Lemon Bright field, September 27 at the Autumn Bouquet Garden, and October 7 at the nearby Kochia garden garden.

Entrance fees are waived on October 25 and 25, 2026.

Spend a day sampling some of Japan’s best gyoza, as the festival will have around 30 stalls offering many different styles of the quintessential Japanese dumpling. Enjoy a mentaiko (cod roe) and cheese gyoza from Fukuoka’s Hakata Hachisuke, ground pork and Korean seaweed dumplings from Sangenjaya's Gyoza Shack, beef tongue gyoza from Hokkaido’s Kawa To Ann, and many more unique fillings that you wouldn’t find elsewhere.

The festival vendors only accept cashless payments.

Western Australian indie rock outfit Spacey Jane are making their way to Japanese shores for the first time this October. Achieving breakout success during the pandemic, the quartet has since gone on to bash out successful tours of Europe and North America, and make appearances at international festivals like Governors Ball, Lollapalooza and Osheaga. Their latest EP, Exit Wounds, was recorded during the same session as their 2025 album If That Makes Sense and features three previously unreleased tracks. The upcoming Japan show comes amongst performances in South Korea and Singapore.

2026 is shaping up to be a celebratory year for Harajuku-born clothing brand Beams, which is marking both 50 years since its founding and the 10-year anniversary of its Beams Japan label. The latest in a long line of collaborations and pop-ups is this limited-time shop popping up in one of the most unexpected places: on the Sensoji Temple grounds.

Setting up shop from September 26 to February 28, the compact pop-up consists of four interconnected shipping containers and offers exclusive merch made by artisans from eastern Tokyo. Highlights include tenugui hand towels by Nihonbashi’s Todaya Shoten, finished using a traditional Tokyo dyeing technique (¥2,750), and the Kaminarimon lantern-shaped ‘Kaminarimon Reflector’ (¥1,980), perfect for night runs and cycling rides. The store-exclusive, Asakusa-inspired, Beams Japan logo-adorned sacoche, pouches and wooden swords (!?) should be nice to have, too.

Tennozu’s cross-disciplinary Meet Your Art festival is returning this October for the fifth time, but on an expanded scale and with a specific focus on new and emerging cultural phenomena. As one of Tokyo’s largest art festivals, it features over 150 promising artists, alongside exhibitions, art fairs, live performances, outdoor markets and more.

Spanning four days from October 9 to October 12, the festival takes over the entire neighbourhood around the Tennozu Canal, with events taking place across multiple Terrada Warehouse venues as well as the picturesque canalside boardwalk. The main exhibition, titled ‘Reflux: Signs of Resurgence’, explores subtle changes, sensations and ‘signs’ emerging in contemporary society, as curated by artistic director Mirai Moriyama and curators Yama Yoshida and Kentaro Watanabe. Expect works by the likes of avant-garde conceptual art group Ideal Copy, Evala, Michiko Tsuda, Osamu Tezuka and more at Warehouse Terrada G1-5F.

Alongside the exhibition, there are multiple fairs and markets where you can purchase art. ‘Meet Your Artists’ and ‘Co-Crossover’ both feature over 40 artists, ranging from established names to emerging artists. These are taking place at Warehouse Terrada B&C Hall and Warehouse Terrada D Hall, respectively.

Beyond the exhibitions and art fairs, the festival features live music and DJ sets along the canal, as well as the Super Art & Craft Market, co-produced with Beams Creative, which brings together more than 80 shops and creators selling artworks, crafts, food and drinks. With so much happening across the neighbourhood, the festival makes for a full day of exploring Tennozu’s art and cultural scene.

Tickets are now on sale via the official website. 

On October 9, only the market and live performances will open to the public; art areas will hold preview events.

Try out some of the best soul-warming curries from Tokyo’s curry neighbourhoods of Kanda and Jimbocho this autumn. There are over 400 curry shops in the area and this long-running event brings together most of them to do battle for the Grand Prix title.

From August 1 to December 20, a stamp rally will be held in the area, where over 150 participating curry purveyors will have a stamp on hand to stamp your stamp card, which you can print yourself in A3 size. Visit ten curry restaurants to get a ‘Curry Buddy’ certificate featuring Rilakkuma, or 36 shops or more to become a ‘Kanda Curry Meister’. Check the curry restaurant map and list before making a visit. Get your ‘Curry Buddy’ reward by visiting the Chiyoda Tourism Office, or fill out the form to receive the more prestigious ‘Curry Meister’ award.

Additionally, on October 31 and November 1, there will be booths selling a range of curries from around the world at Ogawa Square for the Grand Prix finale, including Thai, Indian, Japanese and more – so come hungry.

Sound, visual art and site-specific elements blend together in innovative and challenging ways at Ambient Kyoto, a multisensory, immersive exhibition that now makes its first foray into Tokyo, landing at Azabudai Hills Gallery. The display centres on the installation ‘async – immersion’, envisioned by the much-missed Ryuichi Sakamoto and Shiro Takatani of Dumb Type and first presented in Kyoto in 2023.

Inspired by Sakamoto’s 2017 album async, ‘async – immersion’ features visuals by Takatani and spatial audio design by sound engineer ZAK, whose fingerprints are all over many of Sakamoto’s late-career projects. At Azabudai Hills, the work has been reconstructed exclusively for the venue, with the setup including a 26-metre-wide screen for displaying the video elements of the installation.

True to the title of the work, the aural and visual components are aligned but not fully synchronised; their constantly shifting relationship rewards attentive viewing and encourages visitors to approach the work on their own terms.

Inspired by an art-driven vision for urban space and a decade of private sector-led redevelopment that has seen the city of Maebashi in Gunma prefecture grow into an architecture destination, the inaugural Maebashi Biennale unfolds across the city’s central district. Art, architecture, food, music and poetry come together at sites scattered throughout the city centre, weaving walkable art experiences into Maebashi’s evolving urban landscape.

The line-up of some 70 artists and groups ranges from designer-turned-artist Martin Margiela to Mika Ninagawa with EiM, who will unveil a brand-new installation. Other intriguing projects include Food as Art?, curated by Takefumi Hamada, in which internationally acclaimed chefs including Rasmus Munk and Yusuke Takada come together to develop and offer a variety of culinary experiences, and the Tree Hut Project, which will see Tadashi Kawamata build a tree hut in the giant zelkova tree in front of the Arts Maebashi museum. This structure will be accompanied by other tree huts nearby, conceived by local citizens through workshops. The full list of art projects can be viewed on the official website.

Passport Tickets valid throughout the festival period allow for one-time entry to each paid exhibition venue and are available for purchase in advance.

One of Tokyo's three German beer fest spin-offs this autumn (including Shiba Park and Tachikawa), Munich Oktoberfest kicks off on September 18 at Urban Dock LaLaport Toyosu. This beer extravaganza at least manages to fall within a few weeks of the original German beer-fuelled festival it's copying, running from September 18 until October 12.

As with all the other Oktoberfests in town, you can enjoy pints of German beer served in glasses that can fill up to a litre, alongside bratwurst and sauerkraut. There will be oompah bands to sweeten the mood.

Entry is free and you can pay as you go. Do note that the event is mostly cashless; you can pay via credit card, PayPay, IC card, QuicPay, ID and other forms of electronic payment.

Tokyo Tower’s alternative to the usual summer beer gardens kicks off the outdoor drinking season with a double dose of whisky highball festivals. Head to the terrace at the base of the tower for a wide selection of highballs alongside snacks like karaage and grilled bacon.

There’s also a meatier option on the roof of the Tokyo Tower Foot Town, where the Tokyo Tower Rooftop Highball Garden serves all-you-can-eat jingisukan, the Hokkaido-born lamb barbecue named after Mongol warlord Genghis Khan.

Two hours of all-you-can-drink alcohol and limitless jingisukan costs ¥6,300 (teens aged 13-19 ¥4,300, primary school students ¥3,300, children aged 4-6 ¥2,300, all with non-alcoholic drinks, of course).

The Tokyo Tower Ultimate Kaku Highball Garden at the base of the tower is open until October 12, from 4pm-10pm on weekdays and 12noon-10pm on Sat, Sun & holidays.

The Tokyo Tower Rooftop Highball Garden is open until October 18, from 5pm-10pm daily. Make your reservations here.

Shinjuku welcomes a brand new Korean pub-style beer garden, located on the rooftop of the Lumine Est shopping complex in the heart of the city. You can choose from four meal plans: the Pocha course (¥3,500), which includes yangnyeom chicken and bulgogi kimbap; the Korean Chicken BBQ course (from ¥4,000), offering chicken marinated in sweet and spicy miso sauce as well as salted green onion sauce; the samgyeopsal and beef galbi course (¥5,000), featuring makgeolli-aged samgyeopsal and seafood pancake; and the premium BBQ course (from ¥6,000), which builds on the samgyeopsal set with the addition of wagyu steak. All four courses come with a two-hour all-you-can-drink plan, with the options including fruit-flavoured soju, makgeolli, highballs, and both Korean and Japanese beers, along with unlimited banchan (Korean mini side dishes), French fries and curry.

The force behind smash-hit titles including Chainsaw Man and Jujutsu Kaisen, Japanese animation studio Mappa is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year. To mark the milestone, the company is hosting its largest-ever exhibition from September 16, bringing together work from 23 titles at the newly opened Yurakucho Museum.

The exhibition features original drawings, large-scale sets and video projections that immerse visitors in the worlds of Mappa shows and films such as Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, Attack on Titan: Final Season, Jujutsu Kaisen and more.

At the Chainsaw Man exhibition area, you can feast your eyes on exclusive production materials, including drawings that follow the story of The Movie: Reze Arc, from Denji and Reze’s first encounter and the explosive battle between Chainsaw Man and Bomb to the conclusion of their story. Don’t miss the illuminated life-size figure of Bomb, which is being unveiled for the first time.

The Attack on Titan: Final Season zone features original drawings for key scenes, displays explaining the production process, and original hand-drawn watercolour artwork of the symbolic hill from the story’s ending.

The Jujutsu Kaisen area revisits some of the series’ most iconic battle scenes and memorable moments. Production materials are exhibited in the first half of this zone, including original drawings from Season 1 and Jujutsu Kaisen 0, while the second half features materials from Season 2, Hidden Inventory / Premature Death, Shibuya Incident and Season 3, The Culling Game Part 1.

The exhibition will be held in two parts: the first from September 16 to October 25, and the second from October 28 to December 7. Some exhibits will be changed between the two parts, giving you a reason to plan multiple visits.

Tickets are available for specific dates and time slots. You can currently purchase tickets for the first half of the exhibition via Lawson Ticket, and place applications for advance lottery tickets for the second half (from Aug 22).

South Korean digital art and design firm D’strict is joining hands with Sanrio to bring a popular interactive exhibit to Japan for the first time after a successful run in Seoul last year. Utilising the latest digital media technologies, the hotel-themed exhibition in Shinjuku’s Tokyu Kabukicho Tower takes you on a photogenic and immersive journey through 11 themed areas in the imaginary hotel, with characters such as Hello Kitty, My Melody, Kuromi, Cinnamoroll and Pompompurin appearing in their own dreamy, fairytale-like rooms.

While the full details are still under wraps, expect to see a plentiful line-up of exclusive Sanrio merch, including Hotel Floria room key charms, hotel sticker sets and travel-themed accessories.

The exhibition space is located on the fourth floor. Tickets are now on sale via Eplus.

One of Tokyo’s premier contemporary art galleries, Nanzuka has opened its brand-new flagship space in Shibuya Axsh, marking the gallery’s return to Shibuya after a 20-year absence. The inaugural exhibition celebrates contemporary artist Keiichi Tanaami with his solo show ‘Do Not Bomb’. Spanning works from the 1960s to unreleased pieces made before the artist’s death in 2024, the exhibition explores Tanaami’s memories of war through around 60 works, including silkscreens, collages, paintings, animations, sculptures and videos.

The work closest to the entrance is ‘Do Not Bomb’, created while Tanaami was preparing for a large-scale solo exhibition in 2024. Made against the backdrop of ongoing wars around the world, the piece features a goldfish at its centre, flying towards the viewer like a cannonball.

The exhibition also features Tanaami’s ‘No More War’ series, which connects to ‘Do Not Bomb’. Created in 1967, the series was submitted to an anti-war poster contest hosted by American magazine Avant Garde in 1968, where it was selected as an outstanding work. Influenced by pop art, the silkscreen prints reflect Tanaami’s early interest in reaching a wider audience through reproduced imagery.

The exhibition runs until October 17. Check the gallery website for more details.

The Pola Museum of Art celebrates two milestones with ‘The New Vision: Monet and the Contemporary Gaze’, a large-scale exhibition marking both the museum’s 25th anniversary and the centenary of the death of Claude Monet (1840–1926). Running from June 17 2026 to April 7 2027, the exhibition brings together all nineteen Monet paintings from the museum’s renowned collection, the largest trove of the Impressionist master’s works in Asia, alongside works by 18 contemporary artists from Japan and abroad.

Spanning Monet’s career from his early landscapes to his celebrated Water Lilies, ‘The New Vision’ places the artist’s works in dialogue with contemporary artistic practices. Featuring artists including Lucas Arruda, Pierre Huyghe, Roni Horn, Wolfgang Tillmans, Fujiko Nakaya, Kapwani Kiwanga and Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, the exhibition explores the theme of vision through a wide range of media, from photography, installation and sound to performance and environmental works. Many artists are being introduced to Japanese museum audiences for the first time, while several new commissions created specifically around Monet’s legacy also make their debut.

Extending beyond the galleries into the museum’s lobby and the surrounding forests of Hakone, the exhibition transforms the entire site into a landscape of visual discovery. By bringing together Monet’s enduring vision and the perspectives of contemporary artists, ‘The New Vision’ offers a compelling reflection on how we see, experience and understand the world today.

Minami Tada (1924–2014) was a quietly radical figure in post-war Japanese art whose practice unfolded across sculpture, relief, lighting and architectural space. Working at the intersection of art, design and emerging industrial technologies, Tada developed a distinctive visual language that embraced transparency, reflection and light – materials and phenomena closely tied to Japan’s rapid economic growth. As a pioneering female artist operating in a male-dominated field, her work anticipated many later conversations around spatial perception and the expanded field of sculpture.

From August 29 to December 6, the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo presents the artist’s first solo exhibition in Tokyo in 35 years. This long-overdue retrospective traces the arc of Tada’s career, from early paintings to her most emblematic sculptural works, as well as large-scale pieces created for architectural settings. Drawing on industrial materials and contemporary technologies, her works explore how light interacts with form and space, producing effects that shift with the viewer’s movement.

The exhibition also includes archival materials that shed light on the artist’s process and intellectual context, situating her practice within broader developments in post-war Japanese art and design. At a moment when interest in overlooked modernist figures is growing both in Japan and internationally, ‘Still, shimmering light’ offers a timely reassessment of an artist whose work feels strikingly current. Elegant, experimental and forward-looking, the exhibition reintroduces Tada as a vital voice in the history of contemporary art.

A visionary who worked along the boundaries between art, design and everyday life, Ettore Sottsass (1917–2007) was one of the most influential figures in 20th-century Italian design. Rising to prominence in the 1950s through his groundbreaking work for the typewriter and computer manufacturer Olivetti, Sottsass redefined industrial design by infusing functional objects with emotion, symbolism and wit. His restless creative spirit culminated in the 1981 founding of the Memphis Group, an international collective whose bold colours, playful forms and radical aesthetics came to define post-modern design and reshape global visual culture.

‘Design begins where magic begins’ at the Artizon Museum is the first comprehensive retrospective of Sottsass’s work in Japan. Drawing from the Ishibashi Foundation’s extensive collection, the exhibition brings together 112 works spanning the entirety of its subject’s long and prolific career, from early experiments to later, more philosophical creations.

Through furniture, industrial design and conceptual works, the exhibition traces Sottsass’s lifelong challenge to strict rationalism and his belief that design should reflect the emotional and spiritual dimensions of human life. Humour, colour and sensuality emerge as tools with which he sought to illuminate the lived experiences, desires and contradictions of modern society. Offering a rare opportunity to encounter Sottsass’s work in depth, the exhibition reveals a visionary who insisted that true design begins with imagination and magic.

Summer is here, and so is the National Museum of Nature and Science’s ‘Special Exhibition: Super Amazing World of Life’, a big-time showcase created in collaboration with NHK’s long-running wildlife documentary series Darwin ga kita! (‘Darwin Has Come!’). Combining scientific research with spectacular natural-history filmmaking, the exhibition explores the extraordinary ways in which animals have adapted to an ever-changing planet.

Since the birth of the Earth, life has evolved in response to dramatic environmental shifts, developing remarkable physical traits and survival strategies that have enabled species to thrive across diverse ecosystems. Centring on the animal kingdom, the exhibition examines these evolutionary adaptations through the museum’s extensive collection of specimens, the latest scientific findings and immersive audiovisual presentations.

A particular highlight is the partnership with NHK’s acclaimed nature programme, which celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2026. Having documented wildlife in more than 70 countries and captured over 160 world-first observations, the series contributes a wealth of breathtaking footage that vividly illustrates animal behavior in the wild. These films complement the museum’s scientific displays, bringing evolutionary processes and survival strategies to life with exceptional immediacy.

Blending research, museum collections and cutting-edge wildlife cinematography, ‘Special Exhibition: Super Amazing World of Life’ offers visitors of all ages an engaging introduction to the ingenuity of evolution. By revealing the astonishing abilities animals have acquired over millions of years, the exhibition both provides a celebration of biodiversity and encourages a deeper appreciation of the resilience and complexity of life on Earth.