[Review] teamLab Borderless Photo Tour: Inside Tokyo's Interactive Museum for Art & Tech

21 March 2026

When I went to Tokyo for the first time last year, I knew I needed to go to at least one teamLAB exhibition (Tokyo has two). It'd been on my radar forever. Tickets were expensive, even with stronger currency conversion – about C$40 per person – but it was 100% worth it.

teamLAB has been around since 2001 as a collective of so-called "technologists," blending and blurring the lines between traditional art, projections, architecture, science, and technology. Most importantly, they curate experiences.

These experiences are unique and aptly suited to the modern world because 1) they are accessible and relatable to everyone, and 2) they make for great Instagram photos. You almost can't help it; you simply can't go to a teamLAB art exhibition and not try to take a bit of it home with you.

In fact, you are part of the exhibition. This is a magical place where a single touch or lean on the wall can influence the installations.

We decided on teamLab Borderless: MORI Building DIGITAL ART MUSEUM because it was winter, and my mom wasn't up to treading through water like you allegedly can at the Planets exhibition. Borderless is technically also the older of the two, though its current location in Azabudai Hills (since 2024) is a re-opened version of the original one.

There's a coffee shop right outside the entrance, where I stopped for a matcha latte before I entered – no drinks allowed inside!

They also provide free lockers for you to store your belongings. Trust me, you don't want to carry extra layers when you're busy snapping it up inside.

Entering the museum is a bit like entering the Twilight Zone. There's a long, dark hallway where staff first explain the rules to you, then you descend the stairs and enter the wonderful world of Wonka (just kidding, but it's just as magical).

A cool thing is if you download the official app, you can read about the various installations projected on the walls. The app will detect which room you're in.

Each room has an overarching theme, and each separate installation or "show" has its own subtitle as well, but for simplicity's sake I'll be using the overarching theme names.

Here are some of my highlights.

All titles and descriptions of rooms are sourced from the official teamLab app.

Flower Forest

"Flowers blossom according to the seasons, and the places where they grow gradually change ... The flowers bud, grow, and blossom before they begin to wither and their petals eventually scatter, repeating the cycle of life and death in perpetuity."

Flower Forest is the first space you enter. It's a large area with sectional walls and borders that, ironically, seem borderless as the projections move, flow, and dance with you.

A Rock Where People Gather

"The waterfall that pours onto The Rock Where [sic] People Gather continues to transform, influenced by the presence of the rock and the people within the space, along with the artworks that enter the space. The flow of water itself, will also influence the artworks that enter the space. The picture at this moment can never be seen again."

The de facto resting place for visitors, thanks to the large rock by the wall. Sit, stand, or slide, and the waterfall will pour around you, affected by your curvatures and touch.

Installations from other areas, including Flower Forest, can seep into this room.

Sketch Ocean

"All the various fish drawn by everyone swim around in this ocean."

A super fun, innocent room where you can line up to enter the drawing annex, trace an outline of a fish or design your own, and have it scanned and dropped into the ocean outside.

The workers will make you feel like you just created the masterpiece of the 21st century. 😄

Microcosmoses

"Countless lights continue to move through an infinite space with an unknown depth. The artwork explores the question, "Can a universe be created by components that are spatially and temporally separate, but where different orders are formed and overlap as a whole?"

Not to be confused with Bubble Universe, Microcosmoses uses spheres or globes of light on tracks that twist elegantly into infinity. It feels like a mix of a house of mirrors and a mad scientist's greatest dreams.

Megalith Crystal Formation

"Masses of spacetime exist in disarray, and the spacetimes of each mass connect to each other."

A small, hidden room that has you treading cautiously due to its 360-degree surround effect. The installations cycle through flowers and water, red and blue.

(Note: This room, and some others with completely immersive installations, may not be suitable for those prone to dizziness or who have claustrophobia.)

Infinite Crystal World

"Pointillism uses an accumulation of distinct dots of color to create a picture. Here, light points are used to create three-dimensional objects. The light sculpture extends infinitely in all directions."

A fan favourite, stay long enough in Infinite Crystal World, and you'll be treated to a surprise light show (or several) that will have the entire audience gasp with wonder. It's a room where you don't know where one point ends and another begins.

Memory of Topography

"Memories of a timeless rural mountain landscape are depicted in a space with varying elevations that visitors can move through. The world of the artwork changes with the passage of real time. The budding rice plants, still small in the spring, grow larger in the summer and turn golden in the fall. As time passes, the flowers also change, and the gentle breezes move in response to the behavior of people."

I called this the higanbana room in my head, for the red flowers' initial resemblance to Japan's symbolic "death flower," the poisonous red spider lily. They are purported to grow alongside the path to the afterlife.

Upon closer inspection through my photos (interesting how reality can be distorted by personal perception), it turns out they are not red spider lilies at all, just flowers grouped together on lily pad-like stems. The installation eventually transitions through all four seasons if you stay long enough.

Dissolving Light

"Artworks created as one with the space dissolve and blend into this world. The artwork and this world are continuous and the boundary between the artwork and the body becomes ambiguous."

A small, otherworldly room that encourages a journey through space and time, thanks in no small part to the spraying mist that reflects and refracts the installation.

Bubble Universe

"What are you looking at? Where is the focus? And does it exist?"

Another fan favourite for its endless aesthetic appeal and the sense of infinity inside, Bubble Universe is so popular that you can't stay long in it; workers let new visitors in once old visitors have exited.

It's another dazzling display of the qualities of light and reflection.

And various other rooms...

Even after two hours in the museum, we couldn't see everything or get to see all the installations (they're alive! they roam around). Other installations include Frozen Transparency, Beyond Borders, and the EN TEA HOUSE where digital flowers will bloom out of your cup (though an extra fee is required to enter).

teamLab Borderless is stunning.

You could go round and round and keep discovering new rooms and new art; these are just some examples. Keep an eye out near the washrooms too because some of those "paintings" are actually shifting installations.

Even my mother, who would never have put this on her own bucket list, admitted this museum was pretty cool. It's the museum for non-museum-goers.

But as you've probably noticed in the photos, it's also extremely packed. The good thing is you don't have to feel weird about striking a pose because there are people sitting; lying down; completely splayed along the floors and walls everywhere. The bad thing is if you're hoping for a calmer, minimalist experience, there are few opening hours that can accommodate that.

Try booking a ticket as early in the day as possible if you want the visuals without the crowds.

I think what makes teamLab's interactive work so compelling is their perfect blend of surrealism within time and space. It really is like walking into multiple other universes when, in reality, you're walking around black blocks of wall positioned in optical-illusion-like ways.

Describing their inspiration, teamLab says, "teamLab is interested in the fact that although the world is continuous and without boundaries, it is cognitively separated, and especially when viewed through a lens, the world in which one's body is located is separated from the world one is seeing."

The exhibitions are all about ephemerality, that quality of impermanence that permeates not just the walls but our lives in whole, leaving space for the senses to divine and affect. Knowing each pattern or sequence will never be the same again is the core beauty of the universe.

In turn, it inspires us to ask ourselves – even as we snap away to "catch" those impermanent moments – is the world we see in the photos we take home the world that enveloped us? How do perception, reality, and logic intertwine to make sense of the chaos? Can anything ever really be "captured" or understood? Is our perception based out of a need to simplify and make sense of things we do not understand?

These are the questions that teamLab gets you wondering.

Reference

All quotes and installation descriptions are sourced from the official teamLab app.

"teamLab App." teamLab Inc., apps.apple.com/cy/app/teamlab/id1389775096. 

Images

All images copyright of Lonely Pirouette except for the cover photo and the quotes within the below two images.