The leaves are finally turning in Tokyo and the most anticipated time of year in the city – aside from cherry blossom season, Golden Week, Silver Week, Halloween, New Year’s and Respect the Elderly Day – has arrived. While Rikugien tops our favorite place for fall foliage hunting, check out our complete list of Tokyo’s best leaf-viewing destinations. Or keep reading for art exhibition launches, sake festivals, bacon festivals and many other non-deciduous events happening this weekend in Tokyo.
Makoto_Honda | Shutterstock.com
Autumn Evening Illumination at Rikugien Gardens
Built by a feudal lord during the Edo period, Rikugien Gardens was designed to reflect scenes from waka poems. The Tsukiyama-Sensui style garden’s illumination event is the perfect way to admire the fiery flames of autumn foliage.
Bjarke Ingels and Jakob Lange, Title of the work: The Orb, 2018, Photo: Michael Filippoff
Future and the Arts: AI, Robotics, Cities, Life: How Humanity Will Live Tomorrow
This cross-genre exhibition at Mori Art Museum encourages us to contemplate cities, environmental issues, human lifestyles and the likely state of human beings as well as human society – all in the imminent future – via cutting-edge developments in AI, biotechnology, robotics and AR, plus art, design and architecture.
© Michael Holmes
The Pirates of Tokyo Bay 9th Anniversary
The Pirates of Tokyo Bay improv comedy group is celebrating their ninth anniversary by showcasing their spontaneous and wacky comedy skills at What the Dickens! in Ebisu.
Peera_stockfoto | Shutterstock.com
Christmas Market at Yokohama Red Brick Warehouse
Inspired by traditional German markets leading up to the advent of Christmas, each year Yokohama’s Red Brick Warehouse delivers a magical fairytale setting complete with thousands of twinkling lights and a giant real fir tree.
Tokyo Comic Con 2019
Comic book fans, movie lovers and cosplay appreciators take over Makuhari Messe for Tokyo Comic Con 2019. This year’s celebrity guests so far include Zachary Levi Pugh, Sebastian Stan, Rupert Grint and Orlando Bloom.
Takashi Murakami ©2019 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved. ©Fujiko-Pro Courtesy Perrotin
Takashi Murakami: Superflat Doraemon
This exhibition showcases the latest Doraemon collaboration works by Takashi Murakami. It marks Murakami’s 13th solo exhibition with Perrotin and the first to be held at Perrotin Tokyo.
GODDESS – HEL reviving the dead – 2019 © Pyuupiru
PYUUPIRU: GODDESS
Leading Japanese contemporary artist PYUUPIRU holds her first solo exhibition in 12 years at Diesel Art Gallery in Shibuya. The exhibition features the large portrait series “GODDESS,” including seven new pieces.
Johnnie Highball Bar with Inspirational Cult
Johnnie Highball Bar, in collaboration with Inspirational Cult, created a live event that captures the core values of Shibuya street culture through art, dance and music.
©AstridKarger
Arditti Quartet Live At The Takasaki City Theatre
The London-based string ensemble Arditti Quartet comes to the newly opened Takasaki City Theatre to perform their celebrated contemporary works and early 20th-century works.
Detanico Lain, sun (radiante), 2019, Courtesy of the artist
Detanico Lain x THE CLUB: “Between Yesterday and Tomorrow”
The installation by this Paris-based art duo at THE CLUB at Ginza Six is a line of light that materializes the imaginary Date Line. It symbolically divides the space in two different days, though time stays the same.
3rd Annual Japan Bacon Festival
Over 20,000 pork-lovers will converge in Kofu in Yamanashi Prefecture to indulge in cross-cultural US Pork creations, refreshing drinks, an annual crafts fair, a bacon-eating contest, a bacon queen competition and live entertainment.
Hiroshima Sake Seminar – Sake & Cheese Pairings at Le Cordon Bleu Tokyo
Enroll in this one-day seminar led by Le Cordon Bleu’s resident sake expert and chefs to learn about sake outside of its traditional Japanese context by pairing the drink with cheese.
Sunflower Harvest by J.Borges
Noh x Brazil’s Cordel Literature
At this contemporary theater production, traditional Japanese noh theater will interpret Cordel literature, a Brazilian literary art form, in a multimedia production with English subtitles available.
Taira Kurihara – Train Portraits
A new photo exhibition at KATA gallery presents a fresh perspective on the evolution of railways. Taira Kurihara’s first solo exhibition showcases his dynamic photo series looking at the iconic faces of trains from the last century.
2019 SneakerCon Osaka
MGM Resorts Japan brings the world’s largest sneaker culture convention to Osaka for this two-day even featuring some of the rarest, most exclusive, one-of-a-kind sneakers that collectors have to offer.
Tokyo Station 105th Anniversary Celebration
Shops at the commercial facilities Gransta Marunouchi, Ecute Tokyo, Ecute Keiyo and the surrounding streets of Tokyo Station help commemorate the station’s 105th anniversary.
João de Mendonça Lima Neto
UltraSuperNew – Vanishing Sights Exhibition
This solo exhibition by Brazilian ambassador João de Mendonça Lima Neto introduces a series of black and white photographs; focusing on transient landscapes and faces he has encountered during his travels throughout Asia.
Gradation Daikanyama
This one-of-a-kind exhibition blends art, photography, fashion, music and food to condense the quality and sophistication of Daikanyama to create an event organizers hope becomes a culturally delightful model of “Tokyo night economy.”
Bauhaus Film Festival
To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Bauhaus, the Goethe-Institute will host a film festival with a lineup of documentary films introducing Bauhaus’s artistic or socio-political agenda from a wide range of perspectives.
Culture Kids School: Art Show & Open House
Over the last couple of months, the kids at this vibrant new international school based in Nakamachi (Kaminoge Station) have been hard at work creating beautiful artworks based on different themes covered in the curriculum. This event showcases the creative talents of the students, and also serves as an open day for new families who would like to view the school and explore what they have to offer.
