Looking for information about TeamLab Borderless in Azabudai Hills? This guide covers everything you need to know about this unique digital art museum including tickets, hours, and what to expect.
What exactly is TeamLab Borderless?
TeamLab Borderless is an immersive digital art museum in Azabudai Hills spanning 10,000 square meters with about 60 interactive artworks. Unlike traditional museums, the digital artworks here move freely between rooms without boundaries, responding to visitor presence and constantly changing.
The installations use advanced projection mapping, sensors, and computer programs to create environments that visitors can physically interact with rather than just observe.
What makes this museum truly unique is that no two visits are identical – the artworks continuously evolve based on seasonal programming, time of day, and visitor interactions, creating a living ecosystem of digital art.
Key Areas of TeamLab Borderless
Borderless World: The main area where digital art flows continuously across walls, floors, and even onto visitors’ clothing through projection mapping. The installations change throughout the day and seasons, with flowers blooming, waves crashing, and light patterns following your movements.
Most visitors spend 1-2 hours exploring this section alone because each room offers a completely different sensory experience – from dense forests of light strings to cavernous spaces filled with cascading waterfalls of light.
Key features:
- No physical boundaries between installations
- Projected elements (like butterflies) travel between rooms
- Art constantly responds and adapts to visitor presence
- Each visit provides a different experience based on time of day and crowd patterns
The technology behind this seamless interaction includes hundreds of motion sensors embedded in floors and walls, plus dozens of high-definition projectors calibrated to create perfect alignment across irregular surfaces. Custom software renders all graphics in real-time based on visitor movements, creating a truly interactive environment that feels alive.
Athletic Forest: A more physical zone designed specifically to engage both body and mind through technology-enhanced play spaces. This area was developed in collaboration with child development experts to stimulate spatial awareness and creative thinking through full-body interaction with digital environments.
The installations include trampolines that create digital explosions when jumped on, climbing structures that generate music as you navigate them, and light-based games that require coordination and timing. The Athletic Forest typically requires 30-45 minutes.
Future Park: An educational area focusing on collaborative creation that showcases TeamLab’s vision for how technology can bring people together rather than isolate them.
In this section, visitors actively contribute to the artwork by drawing creatures on paper that are scanned and digitally animated, or by arranging physical blocks that transform into virtual cities with their own ecosystems and traffic patterns.
This collaborative approach makes Future Park particularly valuable for families with children, with most groups spending 30-45 minutes here.
Forest of Lamps: One of the most photographed installations in the entire museum, featuring hundreds of Venetian glass lamps suspended from the ceiling at various heights to create an infinite mirrored forest effect.
The technical achievement here lies in how each lamp responds individually to human presence—when you stand near one lamp, it brightens and changes color, triggering a chain reaction as the light spreads to neighboring lamps like ripples in water.
Due to its popularity, this area often has a separate line with timed entry, with waits of 15-30 minutes during busy periods.
EN Tea House: A unique fusion of traditional Japanese tea culture with cutting-edge digital art technology that creates a meditative break from the more energetic installations.
The experience centers around specially designed cups containing sensors that detect the tea level, projecting digital flowers that bloom gradually as you drink. The tea itself is high-quality matcha prepared in traditional methods, costing around ¥500 extra.
Ticket Information
Regular Admission:
- Adults (15+): ¥3,800
- Children (4-14): ¥1,300
- Children under 3: Free
Purchasing: Buy tickets from the official website at least 2-3 weeks in advance for weekends, 1 week for weekdays. Online reservation guarantees a specific 30-minute entry window, while at-door tickets are rarely available, especially during weekends and holidays.
During peak tourist seasons (March-May and October-November), the museum often sells out completely online weeks in advance.
Important ticketing information:
- The museum strictly limits hourly entries to prevent overcrowding
- At-door tickets are rarely sold even when the museum appears only moderately busy
- Weekend mornings and holidays book up fastest, often months in advance
- Cherry blossom season (late March to early April) sees the highest demand
The online reservation system shows real-time availability and allows you to select from all open time slots. This capacity management system is specifically designed to maintain the quality of the immersive experience, as overcrowding would significantly diminish the interactive elements that make TeamLab unique.
Hours and Best Times to Visit
Opening Hours
Monday to Thursday: 10:00 AM – 7:00 PM
Friday, Saturday, and Holidays: 10:00 AM – 9:00 PM
Sunday: 10:00 AM – 8:00 PM
Best Times: Weekday mornings (10:00 AM – 12:00 PM) have 50-60% fewer visitors, with Tuesday and Wednesday showing the lowest attendance. The museum gets progressively busier throughout the day, reaching maximum capacity between 2:00 PM and 5:00 PM. Morning visitors might share a room with 5-10 others, while afternoon visitors could encounter 30-40 people in the same space.
How timing affects your experience:
- Morning visits allow longer, uninterrupted time with installations
- Early arrivals get clearer photos without strangers in frame
- Afternoons often mean waiting to access popular rooms
- Visitor satisfaction surveys show morning visitors rate their experience approximately 30% higher
Seasonal attendance patterns:
- January and February: Lowest overall attendance (except during Lunar New Year)
- March-April (Cherry blossom season): Extremely high demand
- Summer holidays (July-August): High attendance, especially among families
- October: Consistent crowds due to pleasant weather and autumn tourism
This significant difference in crowd density dramatically impacts the quality of your visit, with morning arrivals typically enjoying a more immersive experience. The museum’s capacity management aims to prevent extreme overcrowding, but time of day remains the most important factor in how peaceful your exploration will be.
Tips
What to Wear:
Your clothing choices significantly impact both your comfort and interaction with the art at TeamLab. Museum tracking data shows the average visitor walks approximately 3 kilometers inside the facility, often on varied surfaces designed to enhance sensory experiences. The reflective floors in installations like “Crystal World” and “Light Forest” create stunning infinity mirror effects, while light-colored clothing becomes part of the art itself as projections create changing patterns across your body.
Key clothing recommendations:
- Comfortable shoes – you’ll be walking extensively on various surfaces
- Avoid skirts/dresses – 40% of the museum has reflective floors that create privacy issues
- Wear light-colored clothing – especially white, which interacts best with projections
- Bring socks – required for installations where shoes must be removed
Many installations, especially in the Athletic Forest area, require removing shoes for both practical reasons (protecting sensitive floor sensors) and experiential purposes (enhancing tactile engagement). Visitors who forget socks can purchase them at the gift shop, though at premium prices (¥800-1,000).
Photography:
- Photography is allowed throughout the museum
- Tripods and selfie sticks prohibited
- Flash photography prohibited (interferes with projections)
- Photo spots are marked on the floor in key installations
Time Required: Allow 3-4 hours for a complete visit. Museum visitor data shows the average stay is approximately 2.5 hours, but survey responses indicate most visitors wish they had allocated more time. Unlike traditional museums with numbered exhibits, TeamLab intentionally creates a labyrinthine design where discovery is part of the experience.
Key points about the museum layout:
- No predetermined path exists—visitors create their own journey through interconnected spaces
- You might find new rooms on your third pass that you missed on previous explorations
- Many visitors follow projected butterflies or fish from one installation to another
- The art itself guides your journey, creating unique pathways that couldn’t be mapped in advance
This organic exploration approach is central to TeamLab’s philosophy of art without boundaries. However, it can occasionally create confusion for visitors who prefer more structured experiences with clearly marked start and end points.
First-time visitors often report feeling pleasantly “lost” in the experience, which is precisely the sensation the artists intended to evoke.
Facilities:
- Coat check and lockers are available near the entrance
- Restrooms throughout the facility
- A small café offers beverages and light snacks
- The gift shop sells exclusive TeamLab merchandise
Getting to TeamLab Borderless in Azabudai Hills
The museum is located inside Azabudai Hills, a new mixed-use development in central Tokyo. Here are the direct routes:
| Tokyo Station | Shinjuku Station | Shibuya Station |
| Take the Marunouchi Line to Kamiyacho Station (15 mins) | Take the Oedo Line to Roppongi Station (15 mins) | Take the Ginza Line to Kamiyacho Station (15 mins) |
| 5-minute walk to Azabudai Hills | 10-minute walk to Azabudai Hills | 5-minute walk to Azabudai Hills |
The address is: TeamLab Borderless, Azabudai Hills, 1-3-1 Azabudai, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Key Things to Know Before Visiting
It’s dark inside: The museum maintains very low light levels (5-10 lux) to enhance projections. Your eyes take 3-5 minutes to adjust when entering. This darkness is a technical necessity for the projection technology to function properly – at normal indoor lighting levels, the projected images would appear washed out and lack the vibrant colors that make the artworks effective.
The darkness also conceals the technical infrastructure (projectors, sensors, computers) behind the scenes, creating the illusion that the art exists independently without visible technology supporting it.
No re-entry allowed: Once you exit, you cannot re-enter with the same ticket. This strict policy exists because the museum uses a sophisticated crowd flow management system that carefully tracks visitor numbers in each area to maintain optimal viewing conditions and prevent overcrowding that would diminish the interactive elements of the installations.
The facility is designed as a complete circuit with all necessary amenities (restrooms, café, water fountains, and rest areas) strategically placed throughout the exhibition space so visitors never need to exit until they’ve completed their entire visit.
No maps provided: The museum intentionally omits maps to create a discovery experience where visitors explore organically rather than following predetermined paths.
This design philosophy stems from TeamLab’s core concept that art should flow freely without boundaries or prescribed viewing methods, challenging traditional museum formats where exhibits are numbered and arranged in specific sequences.
The labyrinthine layout features multiple hidden pathways between major installations, with some doorways and passages subtly concealed or changing throughout the day, ensuring that visitors discover new spaces through exploration and serendipity rather than systematic navigation.
Popular installations have wait times: Areas like Forest of Lamps and Crystal World have separate queue systems that can add 15-30 minutes (or 45-60 minutes during peak seasons) to your visit.
These additional wait times exist because these installations have specific capacity limitations based on both physical space constraints and technical requirements.
Staff members monitor these areas with digital counters and implement timed entry systems that typically allow visitors 3-5 minutes in each space.
Why capacity is limited:
- Forest of Lamps: Each lamp contains sensors tracking visitor positions, but the system can only process data from 25-30 people simultaneously
- Crystal World: The infinity mirror effect works best with limited occupancy to maintain the illusion of endless space
- Popular installations receive heavy traffic due to their photogenic qualities
- Limited capacity ensures the technology functions properly and provides the intended experience
During extremely busy periods like Golden Week or summer holidays, the wait for Forest of Lamps alone can extend to over an hour.
Museum management attempts to mitigate this by adjusting overall admission capacity downward on predicted high-traffic days, but planning your visit during quieter morning hours remains the best strategy to minimize these internal wait times.
Is TeamLab Borderless Worth Visiting?
If you enjoy interactive art, photography, or sensory experiences, TeamLab Borderless represents a significant evolution in how art can be experienced, blurring lines between viewer and artwork in ways that traditional museums with their “do not touch” policies cannot achieve.
The technological systems powering these installations represent years of research and development by TeamLab’s engineers.
The experience appeals to an unusually broad demographic spectrum, with visitor data showing strong engagement across age groups from young children to seniors, unlike many art venues that attract more specific audience segments.
Children connect with the playful, interactive elements and unrestricted environment where touching and physical engagement are encouraged rather than prohibited.
For visitors with limited time in Tokyo, consider that a full visit requires at least half a day (3-4 hours) within a typically packed Tokyo itinerary where major sites like Tokyo Skytree or Meiji Shrine might only require 1-2 hours each.
If your schedule is tight but you still want to experience TeamLab’s artistic vision, TeamLab Planets (another TeamLab exhibition in Tokyo) offers a somewhat similar experience with fewer but larger installations in a more compact format that can be completed in 60-90 minutes.