Day 14 Tokyo's teamLab Borderless in the Mori JP Tower

We are up at 7:20 and head once again to Bolange for croissants at 8:15. We are able to find seats across from each other. We sit at the high wood counter. Under the counter is a shelf to stow your belongings as well as hooks for hanging bags.

We are in a bit of a rush this morning as we want to be on a train by 9. We have tickets for teamLab at 11:00. Norm guided us to the closest entrance to the train that is on the same side as Bolange. We find it’s boarded up due to construction so we go across the street to a kitty corner downstairs entrance. Norman has been an expert navigator using a combination of Navitime and goggle map. As we walk and observe the scenery around us Norm usually has his eyes cast down in his cellphone, not an easy task when walking. We are heading to Azabudai Hills, a newly built area with three skyscrapers. One of the three skyscrapers, the 64 story all glass, Mori JP Tower is the tallest building in Japan. If you go to the 33rd floor of the Mori JP Tower, you can see Tokyo Tower right in front of you and the city below (You have to dine in the restaurant on that floor to be able to go to that floor). The skyscrapers were built to the tune of 4.4 billion dollars. Over thirty years in the planning, with the redevelopment commencing in 2019 and finished in 2023 it boasts a massive amount of green space and even has a miniature Central Park in its midst. As part of it's green building standards; all electricity is supplied by renewable energy, heat is reclaimed from its sewage system, rainwater is stored and treated for irrigating the greenery, and wastewater from residences are collected and used in bathrooms on office floors. French and Italian retailers offer luxury goods. The tower's overall form is evocative of the lotus flower in it's symmetry and curve. Before we traveled to Japan we booked tickets for teamLab Borderless online. Tickets are sold out otherwise. TeamLab Borderless reopened inside it's new location in the basement of the Mori JP tower in February 2024. Since the building is a sprawling multilevel complex and we go check with information to get directions on how to get there.

Asking for Directions

Mike and I have been to the other teamLab Planet in Tokyo with the Louies and Ma's in 2023. This will be our second teamLab. This is the explanation for it's name: teamLab = a group of artists plus hundreds of programmers, animators and architects.
Borderless = a digital art museum without a map or borders created by teamLab. The entry process is very efficient and quick because of the pre-ticketing system. We drop off some of our belongings in the lockers and go inside a waiting room where an attendant explains the rules and etiquette of visiting the museum. We descend a dark staircase. Entering the first area, we are immediately overcome by sensory overload. It is wall to floor color and lights. There are five or six areas and fifty artworks. Since there are no maps we try our best to stay together as a group. Fortunately our group of four is small enough that we don't lose each other. The first area is "Forest of Flowers and People". The flowers and plants are real time computer generated renderings based on our movements. All the flowers are moving, opening and closing. The scene is everchanging.

Forest of Flowers and People

Flowers and People

We walk into the corridor and see a band of samurai doing a Bon Odori dance. They dance around corners. You can step in line with them. The bubble room is a myriad of moving and stationary lights that changes color. In Sketch Ocean we colored sea creatures, gave our artwork to be scanned and watched as our sea creature emerged in a vast digital ocean and swam around. We could make our sea creature turn or swim away from us by "touching" them. It was so immersing to watch my seahorse swimming and reacting to my approaching touch that I didn't take photos of the room size aquarium. In the Memory of Topography room we walked through a meadow of lotus plants or rice paddies. My favorite area was the Infinite Crystal World. There is a similar Crystal World at teamLab Planet, but this one at Borderless allowed visitor to control the color and special effects of the hanging string of crystal. We followed the Louies advice to go to the EN Tea House and have tea which was an artistic experience. You have to pay for the tea, but the experience of watching a flower emerges from your tea is worth the cost. In total we spent two hours at teamLab Borderless. There were definitely some rooms that I would have stayed longer in, or returned to but we needed to make our way to Tokyo tower. If I should ever go back I will keep these following tips in mind that I gleaned from another blogger to make the visit even more interactive. At least half of the artwork reacts to touch. We knew this from sea creatures that we had decorated, but in our rush to make sure we visited all the rooms we didn't interact with other artwork as much. Here are some of the tips:

• In the waterfall room, if you stand with your back up against the wall, the “falling water” will “splash” off your head, or if you hold your finger to the wall, the “water” will flow around it. If you look down, the “water” will eddy around your feet like you’re a rock in the stream.

If you touch one of the swarms of butterflies as they move through the museum, some of them will fall to the ground. But if you’re in the Butterfly Room and touch one of the shiny walls, a new flock will burst from your fingertips

• The falling Japanese characters in the Waterfall Room turn into the thing they represent if you touch them. (The character for “firefly” for example, turns into a swarm of fireflies.)

• The birds zooming over the floors and walls will turn into disintegrating chrysanthemums if you step on them or block them.

• The flowers blooming atop your tea at the En Tea Room will slo-mo explode into a widening flurry of petals every time you pick up the bowl and drink.

• If you touch one of the marching soldiers, frogs or oxen, they make noises.

All of the artworks that roam throughout the museum will do something if you touch them

For the En Tea Room:
If you want nice pictures:

• Sip carefully and don’t disturb the layer of bubbles on top. The projection doesn’t reflect very well from the tea surface once they disappear.

• The flower projection will find your tea bowl wherever you set it in front of you, but it takes a moment.

Note: the projection focus is set for the tabletop, not the tea surface, so the exploding petals will look a lot sharper than the flowers in your tea.
And lastly, if you want to be photographed as part of the art in teamLab, wear light colored clothing. If you want to be a silhouette with a face, wear dark clothing. Also don't wear a skirt as some of the rooms have mirrored or reflective floors.

We check out the Azabudai Hills Market inside the JP Mori tower. The Gees get some sushi and I get a chicken skewer for a snack. We walk a short distance to Tokyo tower. The extra cost tickets for the Top Deck observatory are for timed entry. You can go up to the 150 meter Main Deck at any time and visit the two floors which we did while waiting to go to the Top Deck. The Main Deck is a carpeted area with several glass panels in the floor. For the Top Deck tour, our group got two phones with an EarPod so we can listen to a multilingual voice guide system. When you are in a “library” before getting into the elevator to the very top, two portraits of the two men who came up with the idea of the tower start to “talk” about their concept for the tower. (like the talking portraits in Harry Potter”. The architect took his inspiration from the Eiffel Tower, but designed it to be 13 meters taller, making it the tallest freestanding tower in the world, a designation that lasted for over sixty years until the Tokyo Skytree was built in 2012. You can read the caption in the phone as well as listen on the EarPod. Before getting on the last elevator to the top, a photographer takes a photo of your group. You get to keep a small black and white copy at the end. The photo has a title caption VIP for Very Impressive Panorama. At the top deck the phone guide system tells you landmarks below.

Zojoji Temple and Shiba Park

It is decorated with prism mirrors. Floor to ceiling 20 meter windows allows 360 views of the cityscape. We get a bird's eye view. We can see the Mori JP Tower. When you visit at night, the tower is lit with LED lights. It is a romantic spot for couples and it's even called a "Love Power Spot".When you finish visiting the top we go back to the middle floors. The Gees get some Macha cones. In the building at the base of the tower, known as Foot Town, we pass by a selection of shops and restaurants and stop at Pizza La Express for a mid afternoon snack. The four of us ordered a two pizza set. The pizza was freshly baked. Our teriyaki pizza was very tasty. It was small but just perfect for us since we only wanted a snack. The oldest Hard Rock Cafe in Japan (opened 1983) is located nearby in Roppongi Hills. . From Roppongi Hills we take the metro to Korea town where Shirley and I purchase more of the roll on sunscreen from the same saleswoman from my first visit. The saleswoman reminded me of my long time optical assistant, Kitty, a take charge person who knows what's best for you and isn't afraid to tell you. Even though we had paid, the saleswoman gestured for me to scoot over to the facial cream area where she proceeded to apply a cream around one of my eyes with enough pressure to convey that she meant business and even if the cream didn't do its magic, somehow the pressure from her fingers would help take years off half of my face! I don't even know if the cream was really meant for the eye area because it made my eye water (or was that from the pressure?). She asked my audience of three if they noticed the difference between the side she hadn't worked on and the side she had just finished applying the cream to and she held up a mirror for me to check also. There did seem to be a subtle smoothing out of wrinkles. With that acknowledgement, she then proceeded to rub more of the cream on the rest of my face using a deep massaging pressure. If pressure alone could have erased wrinkles, I would have walked out of the store looking twenty years younger. I think we made the saleswoman happy with my additional purchase because she threw in some free samples into our bags before we left. For dinner Mike and I suggested Ichi Ban Kan down the street, a cheap Chinese restaurant that Mike and I ate at on our first visit to Korea town in 2017. Dinner for the four of us came to $20.00 US. We walked back to our hotel, leaving the Gees to shop at GU.