teamLab Planets

teamLab is an art collective founded in 2001, working with programmers, engineers, animators and architects as much as with artists, and its stated project is to dissolve the boundary between the viewer and the work. At Planets that idea is literal: you enter barefoot, the floors slope and give under you, and several works change according to where in the room your body is. The venue opened on 7 July 2018 and its own general information gives the exhibition period as running to the end of 2027, which is the honest answer to whether it is permanent.

The rooms people come for

Drawing on the Water Surface Created by the Dance of Koi and People is the knee-deep water room, where projected koi swim around your legs and burst into flowers when they touch you. The Infinite Crystal Universe is a mirrored hall of hanging light points that you walk into and appear to fall through. Floating in the Falling Universe of Flowers is a domed room where people lie on the floor while flowers open and die overhead.

Floating Flower Garden hangs thousands of living orchids that rise as you approach, so the space opens around you; the orchids are real, and the room smells strongest at night because many of the species partner with nocturnal insects.

The parts that surprise people

Two areas sit outside the main water route. The Athletics Forest is a physical space built on the collective's idea of thinking with the body, and the Catching and Collecting Forest is the children's half of it, where an app lets you catch and collect creatures you find in the room. Outside there is a moss garden of ovoid sculptures that change with sunrise and sunset, which stays open in light rain and shuts in a typhoon.

None of this is signposted as a highlight, and most visitors walk it faster than it deserves.

You go barefoot. Shoes come off at the entrance and socks and tights come off in the locker room, because several works are walked through in water. The water reaches knee height on an adult in places, and the venue states plainly that if your clothing gets wet, staff will ask you to change before you continue: wet clothes are not allowed into the next artwork.

If you have nothing to change into, they lend a towel and ask you to dry off. That is the whole enforcement mechanism, and it is applied.

The rental shorts are free and nobody tells you

Shorts are lent at no charge in sizes from XS to 6L, on request from staff inside the museum, and returned on the way out. Wrap skirts are available beside the mirrored-floor works. Complimentary rental shoes exist for anyone whose footwear will not work.

None of this is advertised at the point of sale, so the majority of visitors in long trousers simply roll them up and hope, and some of them spend the second half of the route in a towel.

The one artwork with a height rule

For safety and hygiene, guests with an inseam of under 40 centimetres cannot walk through the koi water room, which in practice means most small children. They may go through carried, or in a front baby carrier, with a guardian of 18 or over. This is the only physical restriction the venue publishes on an individual work.

The route is one-way and there is no re-entry, so the pace is set by how long you stand still in each room rather than by walking distance. The two things that reliably add time are the locker sequence at the start and the drying-off at the end, neither of which anybody budgets for.

The slot is a window, not a booking

One reseller states the practical rule most clearly: entry is only within the first thirty minutes of your selected slot. Arrive inside that window and you join the entry line; arrive after it and you are relying on staff goodwill, which the venue does extend on the same day if you ask. There is no time limit once you are inside, and staff will only move you along if a room is congested.

The museum runs 08:00 to 22:00, with the last entrance one hour before closing. The store and Sketch Factory open at 08:30 and close with the museum. Vegan Ramen UZU Tokyo, inside the venue, serves 10:30 to 21:30, with only light meals and drinks in the first half hour and last orders for ramen thirty minutes before it shuts; you cannot get into it before your own admission time, because it sits inside the ticketed area.

The closed dates

Reading the operator's own ticket calendar in Q3 2026, the museum is shut on Thursday 1 October 2026 and Thursday 5 November 2026 and open on every other date shown, which runs to the end of November. December slots go on sale in late September. There is no weekly closing day here, which makes it one of the safer bookings on a Monday, when much of the city's museum stock is dark.

Which slot to take

An 08:00 or 09:00 slot is the quietest hour of the day and the only time the mirrored rooms are ever empty enough to photograph without other people in them, which for many visitors is the point. The last two hours are the second-quietest. Between 11:00 and 17:00 on a weekend the entry line itself can take twenty minutes even with a timed ticket, and the rooms are shoulder to shoulder.

Since the fare is set by date rather than by hour, a quiet slot costs the same as a busy one.

• Free lockers sit just past the entrance gate; the usable size is 23 cm wide, 34 cm deep and 37 cm high, and anything larger, a suitcase included, is wire-locked in the buggy store instead
• Personal belongings are not allowed into the artwork spaces at all, for safety and hygiene; if you must carry something, ask staff before you go through
• Buggies are left in the storage area before you enter, and infants may be carried in a front baby carrier
• Children under 13 cannot enter without a parent or guardian aged 18 or over, and there must be one accompanying adult for every three children, including children admitted free
• There are nappy tables in the museum toilets and a first-aid room that doubles as a place to feed or rest, on request to staff
• Photography and video are allowed and encouraged, but no flash and no monopods, tripods or selfie sticks of 30 centimetres or more

Wheelchairs, and the detour route

Wheelchair users transfer to one of the museum's own standard chairs at entry, with tyre covers required if you use your own; the number of house chairs is limited. Senior carts and electric chairs that cannot be held under 2 km per hour must be swapped as well. Some works are viewed from a designated area rather than entered, and on mirrored floors a total weight above 250 kg may be refused on the day depending on floor condition.

There is a published detour route for anyone who wants to skip particular artworks, including visitors with disabilities and families, and you ask a nearby staff member for it.

Who should think twice

The venue lists strong flashing light, dark areas and unstable footing among its conditions, and asks visitors who react badly to light stimulation, who are afraid of confined or dark spaces, who have palpitations or breathlessness, who are pregnant or who are carrying a child to take particular care. Pregnant visitors are not permitted in some areas at all. Assistance dogs are left in a provided cage rather than taken through.

Shin-Toyosu Station on the Yurikamome line is one minute on foot from the north exit and is the correct answer. Shijoumae Station, also Yurikamome and the stop for the fish market, is five minutes. Toyosu Station on the Tokyo Metro Yurakucho Line, which is the one you will reach fastest from central Tokyo, is ten minutes on foot from Exit 7.

The Yurikamome is an automated elevated line with a view, so coming out along it from Shimbashi is worth the extra ten minutes on the clock.

By taxi, and where not to be dropped

The venue publishes ten minutes from Ginza and fifteen from Tokyo Station or from Haneda by expressway. It also asks drivers not to set passengers down at the front entrance, which it calls dangerous, and to follow the security guard's directions instead. There is no car park at the museum; on weekdays a same-day ticket earns one free hour at the LaLaport Toyosu car park, claimed at a different desk depending on where you bought the ticket, with reception open 11:00 to 19:00.

Coming from the airport or the centre

From Haneda the Yurikamome and Yurakucho line routes are both about forty minutes; from Narita it is closer to ninety, and the Narita transfer options decide which. From Ginza take the Yurakucho Line four stops. Which pass covers the Yurikamome, which is not a subway and is not included in most of them, is set out on the getting around page.

• Tickets are not sold on site at all, in any circumstance, which is different from the other teamLab venue in the city (venue FAQ, teamlab.art/e/planets/)
• A ticket bought on the official store can have its date and time changed three times, up to two hours before the slot, but can never be refunded (venue FAQ and ticket store notes, teamlabplanets.dmm.com)
• Free rental shorts run from size XS to 6L and free wrap skirts sit beside the mirrored-floor works, both on request and both unadvertised at the ticket stage (venue visitor notes, teamlab.art/e/planets/)
• The water is chlorinated: sodium hypochlorite is used and levels are adjusted to standard, which the venue states in the same list as the barefoot rule (venue visitor notes)
• Video recorded inside the museum may be used by teamLab Inc. for machine learning to develop and improve artworks, and may contain identifiable faces (venue visitor notes)

The last of those is unusual enough to be worth restating plainly: the venue reserves the right to use footage of visitors, including images containing personal information, as training data for its own work, and says the data will not be passed to third parties except as required by law.

The version we would book is an 08:00 or 09:00 slot, out by 10:30, and then fifteen minutes on foot to Toyosu Market for a very late breakfast, checking first that the market is not closed that day. That combination uses the quietest hour in the museum and the only hours the market is worth walking into, and it puts you back in central Tokyo by lunchtime with the rest of the day intact.

The alternative is an evening slot: the museum runs to 22:00, the last entrance is at 21:00, and the orchid room is at its strongest after dark because of the nocturnal-insect scent cycle. That version pairs with Odaiba rather than with the market, and it is the one to take if the day already has a morning in it. Either way, do not stack this against another timed booking on the same half-day; the three-day itinerary places it with room around it.