What is TeamLabs (and why should you go next time you visit Tokyo)

If you followed our Party of 5 team challenge, you may remember watching videos of our group of 5 playing around in a room full of lights and mirrors, (or maybe you remember the video of me trying to traverse a floor made entirely of bean-bags.) These were snapshots from TeamLabs Planets – an interactive exhibit in Tokyo which unanimously became one of our favorite activities from the whole Party of 5 trip. (And not just because everyone enjoyed laughing at me falling into bean bags, though that was fun.)

Before the Party of 5 trip was even planned, Tim recommended the TeamLabs Borderless exhibit to all of us in a team meeting, suggesting it as a must-see the next time any of us visited Tokyo. At first when he described it, I envisioned an experience like “Meow Wolf” – a kind of darkly quirky playground for grown-ups which currently exists in a few US cities. Stephen’s been to the Santa Fe location (which you can read about here) and I’ve been to the Vegas location…but we both agreed that TeamLabs was much cooler.

What is TeamLabs?

TeamLabs is an art collective with extremely creative, “immersive works” mostly in Asia but expanding to other international locations. The exhibits vary somewhat in size and theme, but they typically play with a mixture of digital and physical elements like lights and mirrors which entirely fill the room. The best way to get an idea of what you’ll experience at TeamLabs exhibits is to browse the concepts on their website or browse the #teamlabs hashtag on social media, (though these social media snapshots don’t really do it justice).

I can’t speak to the other exhibits, but after seeing the TeamLabs Planets exhibit in Tokyo, I’d eagerly visit any of the others, even if they’re different, smaller, bigger, anything. Sign me up. For instance, I’d love to visit the Miami Exhibit TeamLabs Every Wall is a Door which has a few immersive works that we didn’t get to see in Tokyo, or the TeamLabs Borderless exhibit in Hamburg.

See the full list of exhibits here.

TeamLabs Planets Tokyo: What to know before you go

The TeamLabs Planets exhibit is in the Toyosu area of Tokyo. You must reserve tickets in advance (which you can do here for ~$28 USD per adult). Your ticket specifies a time range for when you can enter but doesn’t specify your length of stay. I recommend allowing at least 2 hours or more to soak it all in.

There’s a free luggage storage area available at the entrance and a locker area inside for smaller items – so you can even visit on your way to the airport like we did!

I believe the exhibits occasionally change, but our experience began with a warning about preparing to walk through water up to our knees, then took us through about ~6 rooms of these “immersive works”, (though even the connecting hallways sometimes had interesting sensory features.) You don’t need to worry if you show up wearing tennis shoes. There is a place where you can safely store your shoes before entering.

TeamLabs Planets: Snapshots

I considered doing a little write up of each of the rooms we went through, but I worry that would ruin some of the fun for anyone intending to visit. Instead, I’ll share some of my favorite pictures from our TeamLabs Planets visit. (Keep in mind – there were parts of this experience that were just too hard to capture in photo so this is really just a sampling.)

Watch our instagram reel to get a better feel of it!

 

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A post shared by Carrie Yoder (@earth.to.carrie)

Why I like TeamLabs better than Meow Wolf

I briefly mentioned at the start of this article that both Stephen and I agreed that TeamLabs was more enjoyable than Meow Wolf – the closest thing I can think of to compare TeamLabs to. (Again, he’d seen the Meow Wolf House of Eternal Return in Santa Fe and I’d seen the Meow Wolf Omega Mart in Las Vegas.)

To give you a good idea of what Meow Wolf is, rather than a multi-room art experience, it’s more like a grown-up playground. It starts off looking like an ordinary place (like a grocery store in Vegas’ case and a house in Santa Fe’s case), then it mixes in bemusing elements like trap doors and little bizarre easter eggs. The trap doors lead to a sort of blacklight/neon underworld with slides and puzzles and such. Again, a bit like a playground but with bizarre and trippy elements to keep you intrigued.

So why did I like TeamLabs better?

1. Meow Wolf is more expensive, but not more interesting. For instance, after paying $49/person to enter, we hung out for about an hour and twenty minutes or so and then felt like we’d pretty much seen everything. At TeamLabs on the other hand, we spent $28 per person and stayed for about 2 hours, wishing we could stay even longer or turn around and do it all over again.
2. Meow Wolf is a little more crowded, and a lot more disrupted by crowds. At Meow Wolf the whole experience is kind of a free-form exploration of a space that’s supposed to be full of bizarre surprises, and part of the fun is meant to be discovery – for instance the discovery of trap doors that lead to entirely new rooms. But it’s crowded enough that most of the time you can see where all the fun “surprises” are before they get to surprise you (because you see someone else doing it before you get to figure it out on your own.)At TeamLabs Planets on the other hand you move from one room to the next in a slower pace. Perhaps this helps, or it’s also possible TeamLabs is just more intentional about the pace and quantity of the groups they let in. Or maybe it’s just that the whole experience is less discovery-focused and more sensory-immersion, which is an easier experience to share with others.
3. Meow Wolf is less art. In pictures Meow Wolf might look like it’s doing a similar thing, but the funky lights and colors there are more decorative and thematic than anything else. I know I’m probably starting to sound like some pretentious Millennial trying to describe why the $9 boutique coffee from Portland is inherently better than Starbucks, but let’s hear from someone you can trust never to be pretentious – our favorite down-to-earth British dude, Mr. Pepper. On the No Home Just Roam post he put it well saying “If you go to Meow Wolf in Santa Fe with the expectation that you’re going to a weird art exhibit with some vague theme running through it that doesn’t really make sense, you should have a great time.”

I should disclaimer that the Santa Fe Meow Wolf looked more intriguing and extensive than the Vegas version I saw. Anyway…by the time I’m comparing art exhibits to coffee, you know it’s time to wrap the post up.

The point is this: Every one of us on the Frequent Miler team loved the TeamLabs experience. You don’t need to be a pretentious Millennial like myself to love it. I’m pretty sure as soon as we got in the Uber to head to the airport we all immediately pulled up the website to see where else we could visit a TeamLabs exhibit in the world. It’s just an incredibly unique way to spend time.

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