We had a relaxing start to the day as our only commitment wasn’t until 11:30. We had breakfast in our hotel room and then did some washing and other duties such as writing up the blog for the previous missing days.
At 10:00 we departed the hotel and began the short walk to the nearby Shinjuku Station but were forced to make detour due to some frenetic activity in our main street with police, security personnel and lots of television cameras in readiness. Was this a protest against the government or was the crowd awaiting the arrival of The Rolling Stones? We never found out!
We rely heavily on Apple Maps and this gave us clear directions on how to reach our intended museum destination.
Such valued information entails details such as “walk to the Shinjuku Station 450 m. Board the Tokyo Metro Marunouchi Line (M 09) platform 2. Exit the subway at Kasumigaseki (M 15). Transfer to the Hibiya Line (H 07) and board train at platform 3. Exit train at Kamiyacho (H 05). Walk 150 m to destination.”
Even the walk sections showed directions and one’s present location on the local map.
Apple Maps directions to get from Hotel Gracery Shinjuku to teamLab Borderless
Apple Maps directions to get from Hotel Gracery Shinjuku to teamLab Borderless
We felt we were doing so well with our assisted navigation skills and then our confidence was rocked due to us being directed down an unlabelled side street that surely couldn’t be the right one. We were about to enter a building at the end of this street to seek advice when we discovered we were exactly at the intended destination, namely the ‘teamLab Borderless’ digital art museum.
The experience we had at this museum might be best expressed as a four hour drug-free LSD trip!
The museum comprises a complex maze of interlinked darkened rooms each with varying forms of mesmerising lighting and intoxicating musical sounds that blend to produce an unforgettable visual and audio experience.
Corinne and Jak, reflection in mirror, at entrance to teamLab Borderless- MORI Building DIGITAL ART MUSEUM
It’s difficult to adequately express in words the sensory journey we embarked on but it is sufficient to say that every room we entered was a cause for believing that this was some kind of hallucinatory dream. There must have been many thousands of digital projectors used to project the multi-coloured moving images onto the walls, floors and ceilings.
Some of the more memorable rooms had mirrored floors and ceilings and because of the general darkness it was easy to lose your way or even walk into a wall.
Amongst the most impressive exhibits was ‘Bubble Universe’ a large 10 m x 10 m darkened room with the only light coming from about 500 glass spheres suspended at varying heights from the ceiling. Each sphere had multi internal LEDs that changed colour randomly and to walk through this room without touching the lights was a challenge.
Corinne and Jak in Bubble Universe
Corinne and Jak in Bubble Universe
Another area had tens of thousands of LEDs contained in crystal strings dangling from a high mirrored ceiling with the ever changing lights and complex maze though this visual forest being a rewarding adventure.
Infinite Crystal World' Exhibit
Infinite Crystal World' Exhibit
A really captivating section was the interactive ‘Sketch Ocean’ exhibit. This room had walls and floor comprising hundreds of randomly moving marine creatures coloured by visitors and then projected minutes later. Children especially loved to chase their own fish, turtles or sea-jellies around the room. As soon as an image was touched it immediately responded by veering away from the intruder.
Psychedelic bull shark
Psychedelic whale shark
It is inadequate to limit commentary to just that above but hopefully some of our photos may give more of a clue to the visual feast we’d experienced.
'Universe of Water Particles on a Rock where People Gather'
Flutter of butterflies
We finished our visit by going to the ‘Tea Room’ where in near darkness we drank green tea from glass bowls that were rainbow colour illuminated by lights directly above our individual seats.
Separatory funnels for green tea
Green tea in the Tea Room
Unbeknown to us, teamLab Borderless has similar museums in several other Japanese locations but also in overseas cities including Jeddah, Macao and Abu Dhabi.
We left the museum feeling a little ‘shell-shocked’ in terms of what our eyes and ears had been subjected to for the previous four hours. The often overly used term ‘awesome’ is deservedly appropriate for today’s encounter!
Our return train trip to the hotel went smoothly until we exited the final station to find that it was raining. With umbrellas up and raincoats on we made the short distance back to our hotel with minimal delay.
Later in the evening we had a meal in a nearby café and then with the rain now abated we wandered around the block near the Gracery Hotel.
Tomorrow we have no formal plans as we need to wait to see what the weather is going to offer us.