16 best things to do in Tokyo this Silver Week

This September, Shimokitazawa welcomes the return of its annual lunar art festival that will coincide with the upcoming autumn moon. Back for its fifth edition, Moon Art Night Shimokita will span several venues in the neighbourhood, including the open plaza in front of the station, Shimokita Senrogai Open Space near Shimokitazawa police box, the rooftop of Higashi-Kitazawa Station, and the Bonus Track complex.

Exhibits include an outdoor moon installation by UK artist Luke Jerram, whose giant floating model features striking details of the moon’s surface as captured by Nasa. This particular installation – titled ‘Museum of the Moon’ – is set to be on show every day at the vacant lot of the Shimokita Senrogai complex. Nearby at Shimokitazawa Station Square, you’ll find an installation of phosphorescent cubes that absorb sunlight during the day and release it as a soft glow by nightfall. Produced by Midori Kawano, the installation, titled 'Afterglow', draws on the idea that moonlight is a reflection of the moon as it was 1.3 seconds earlier, offering a literal glimpse into the past.

The festival is also hosting Tokyo-based contemporary artist Shoei Matsuda, whose giant eight-metre-tall inflatable recreates the iconic 'tears of joy' emoji at the Bonus Track complex. Inspired by the evolution of emoji from a feature of Japanese mobile phone culture into a universal visual language, the interactive installation explores the relationship between the digital and physical worlds. Visitors can also use an AR filter to transform their own faces into the 'tears of joy' emoji and share the results on Instagram, blurring the boundaries between online expression and real-world experience.

Moreover, Japanese sculptor and artist Teppei Kaneuji is participating with an interactive installation titled ‘A Thousand Faces of the Moon’ at the paid Higashi-Kitazawa Station rooftop venue. Inspired by the idea that while there is only one moon, its appearance and meaning can vary depending on where you are and your own perspective, the work invites visitors to throw, roll and photograph a collection of moon-shaped sculptures. Kaneuji will also host a silkscreen printing workshop, where participants can create and take home their own moon-themed artwork.

Aside from the art exhibitions, the festival will feature several immersive theatre performances, live music, video installations and pop-ups. Several shops around Shimokitazawa Station will also offer full moon-inspired food and beverages and limited-edition products during the festival.

Tickets to access paid venues and performances are on sale via the official website.

Open-air mobile cinema company Kino Iglu is bringing its outdoor film expertise to Azabudai Hills this September for six days, setting up on the spacious lawn at Azabudai Hills Central Plaza. Curated with the theme 'Mystery of Love' for 2026, they’ll be showing one film per day from September 18 to 23 from 6.30pm (6pm on 18th).

The screening on Friday September 18 will be the romantic comedy film Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018), a sequel and a prequel to the 2008 film Mamma Mia! On the following evening, the multiple BAFTA award-winning 2000 film Billy Elliot will be screened. The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967) will be shown on Sunday, followed by Notting Hill (1999) on Monday. For the remaining public holidays on Tuesday and Wednesday, expect to see Cinema Paradiso (1989) and Call Me by Your Name (2017), respectively.

Before the show starts, stop by the food trucks offering one-hand gourmet dishes such as Cuban sandwiches, hot dogs and wood-fired pizzas.

Celebrated Japanese sound giant Audio-Technica is bringing back its annual market – a celebration of all things analogue, from records and turntables to handmade crafts and vintage goods. First launched in 2022 to mark the company’s 60th anniversary, the market returns this autumn on a much larger scale, taking over SKAC (Skwat Kameari Art Centre) for a month from September 2 to October 4.

Focused on the act of listening, the event’s main highlights include a listening area inside the VDS record store, which also happens to be the market’s co-organiser. At this listening station, you can try out some of Audio-Technica’s finest products, including high-end wooden headphones, turntables and more.

Meanwhile, at the Skwat Hertz Orchestra Archive, you can listen to and compare seven original recordings made at SKAC. Audio recorded from street pianos placed around the venue, along with ambient sounds – think the rumbling of trains overhead and the occasional sneeze – is mixed together to create original pieces that you can only hear here. This theme of listening (after all, Audio-Technica’s motto is the ominous-sounding ‘Always Listening’) continues in the Listening Room, where you can enjoy music played through omnidirectional speakers.

On the weekends of September 19-20, 26-27 and October 3-4, expect a flea market featuring artworks, handmade ceramics, vintage treasures, interior design pieces, fragrances, houseplants, wines and more.

The National Stadium’s swanky next-door park is hosting a summer beer garden and outdoor cinema festival until September 27. During the event, the park will be transformed into an open-air beer garden complete with tables, tents and plenty of seating. Hosted by Corona, the beer garden will serve favourites such as Corona Extra (¥750), alongside the brand’s non-alcoholic Corona Cero (¥600) and inventive Corona-infused cocktails. New for 2026 is the Corona Sunsets Truck, which will be serving drinks and appetisers designed to pair perfectly with Corona beer every Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

While you’re there, don’t miss the free outdoor film screenings taking place on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. This weekend outdoor cinema event is one of Japan’s largest, with screenings running for over 70 days. While the cinema line-up for 2026 has yet to be announced, last year’s programme featured Academy Award-winning titles such as Green Book and Top Gun: Maverick, as well as family favourites including Paddington, School of Rock, The Minions and more. Note that most screenings are Japanese-dubbed versions of the films.

Celebrate all things Mexican at this year’s Fiesta Mexicana, held along the West Promenade outside Aqua City in Odaiba. The annual festival, which is now in its 25th year, brings together the best of Mexico’s long-standing traditions and food culture to commemorate the country’s Independence Day.

Expect about 20 booths offering Mexican food, handicrafts and local specialities. There are fun activities, too, like hitting a piñata, which takes place at 3pm on September 20, 21 and 22 beneath the Yurikamome monorail tracks. Live entertainment is also scheduled over the three-day festival, including a masked Lucha Libre Mexican wrestling performance, so get ready to let your hair down and partake in some live music and dancing.

Shibuya’s biggest festival is happening this September at Konno Hachimangu Shrine and surrounding neighbourhoods. 

The Shibuya Matsuri, which has been celebrated annually for several hundred years, is a Shinto tradition praying for good harvest, prosperity and the health of the shrine parishioners. This year, expect to see a variety of cultural performances at the shrine’s Kaguraden dance hall from 11am on Saturday, such as Indian Odissi dance by the Surya dance troupe, a taiko drumming performance, Japanese folk dance and French Chanson singing, just to name a few.

Complementing this diverse programme are events for children, including yo-yo fishing, local mascot gatherings and a shateki shooting game to win prizes. The shrine will also host a space for food trucks selling the usual Shibuya snacks such as kebab, cotton candy and fried takoyaki. For a complete schedule of events happening within the shrine precincts, check the official event website.

The main highlight of the festival, however, is the gigantic mikoshi parade happening all day on Sunday starting at noon. This procession of 14 portable shrines from various neighbourhoods in Shibuya will kick off in Aoyama and slowly make its way through Shibuya Scramble Crossing before arriving at the square in front of Shibuya 109 at roughly 2pm.

The convergence of many mikoshi in such a tight space is surely challenging, especially as pious groups become competitive and start jostling to carry the portable shrines through the crowds.

Taking place on Sep 19, 20 & 21.

Do note that the market will be cancelled in the case of rain. Check the event Instagram for the latest updates.

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).

Ron Mueck has long been celebrated for redefining figurative sculpture through extraordinary craftsmanship and emotional acuity. After early work in film and advertising, the Australian-born, UK-based artist emerged on the contemporary art scene in the mid-1990s, gaining international attention with Pinocchio (1996) and Dead Dad (1996-97), the latter exhibited in the landmark ‘Sensation’ show at London’s Royal Academy in 1997.

Over the decades, his meticulously crafted human figures, rendered at startlingly altered scales, have probed themes of vulnerability, solitude, resilience and the fragile complexity of existence. With a rare and limited oeuvre of about fifty works, each sculpture distills months or even years of observation and reflection, resulting in pieces that feel at once hyper-real and quietly enigmatic.

From April 29 to September 23, the Mori Art Museum hosts the artist’s first solo exhibition in Japan in eighteen years. Organised in collaboration with the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, the exhibition gathers eleven works tracing Mueck’s evolution, including six making their Japanese debut. Its monumental centrepiece is the Japan premiere of Mass (2016-17), an immersive installation of 100 giant skulls reconfigured to reflect the museum’s architecture. Other highlights include Angel (1997), Woman with Shopping (2013) and the iconic In Bed (2005), each inviting viewers into a deeply intimate emotional space.

Complementing the sculptures, photographs and films by Gautier Deblonde offer a glimpse into Mueck’s studio practice, revealing the quiet rigour behind some of contemporary art’s most affecting works.

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.

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.

Meguro River is becoming one with art this September, with a four-kilometre stretch of the river transformed into a giant ‘instrument’ on September 18 to 22.

At the heart of the project is Kaze – body, a sound installation by artist Ray Kunimoto. Made up of countless metal plates, the installation sits on a boat that travels along the Meguro River, from Tennozu at the river’s mouth to the area in front of Hotel Gajoen Tokyo. Exploring the relationship between invisible forces such as gravity, wind and water and the physical environment, the work turns the energy of the wind into sound, as the metal plates sway and collide with one another.

Kaze – body will operate from 6pm to 9pm on September 18 to 22. Designated viewing points include the promenade along the Meguro River and Gotanda Fureai Waterside Square, where visitors can stroll along the riverbank, wait for the artwork to arrive and listen to its sounds.

At Gotanda Fureai Waterside Square, speakers installed on streetlights will play sounds synchronised with Kaze – body. This allows visitors to experience not just the artwork on the boat, but the entire riverside environment – including the time spent waiting for the boat to pass – as one expansive sound installation.

Check the event website for more details.