teamLab Botanical Garden Osaka — Attraction in Osaka

Our recent visit to TeamLab was an exercise in frustration, mismanagement, and outright paranoia. Despite being admitted into the park under perfectly acceptable weather conditions, we were soon ushered out and told the entire site was closing due to a supposed weather threat—even though the skies remained crystal clear directly overhead.

This knee-jerk decision felt completely disconnected from reality. There were distant storms on the horizon, sure—but nothing overhead, and certainly no sudden change in weather conditions that would justify such an abrupt closure. It felt like a case of extreme risk-aversion taken to an absurd level. If the conditions were safe enough to open the park in the first place, they were safe enough to keep it running for the next 30 minutes. Instead, TeamLab opted for full lockdown mode.

To make matters worse, we were forced to stay inside a building against our will while the sky outside stayed calm and harmless. The experience quickly shifted from disappointing to borderline dystopian.

And who was in charge of these baffling decisions? A group of clearly overwhelmed, untrained staff—most of them teenagers—left to enforce rules they neither understood nor could explain. The lack of leadership was glaring. These were not people equipped to make judgment calls that affect large groups of paying visitors.

TeamLab may pride itself on cutting-edge immersive art, but their operations are another story entirely. If you're planning to visit, beware: your experience could be derailed by a distant cloud and a staff that mistakes panic...

This was unfortunately underwhelming, especially when you've done other night park lighting exhibitions. We found the NAKED Flowers at Nijo Castle in Kyoto to be a better execution of the concept. It was particularly disappointing on the back of teamLab Planets, which gave us high hopes for this one!

• There wasn't much path lighting. This meant when walking between exhibitions, you were basically in darkness. Additionally, one of the sections needs you to step over tree roots and rocks to properly explore it, and I'd be terrified to bring an older relative to that! • A lot of the lighting displays felt dim and not as vibrant as they could have. Having done night projection exhibitions before, I know that it's very possible to make things pop more, and these didn't. • There's a weird choice to do a section that's "glowy eggs", and then further along the track is a distinctly named section that happens to be "slightly bigger glowy eggs". Each section should bring something new and exciting to the table, and this didn't!

Overall, I'd say this is a cute thing to do for an hour or so (my partner and I normally do 1.5x the time recommended in reviews because we like to absorb things, and even we didn't feel compelled to stick around for long). However, if you have limited time in Osaka and are trying to make the most of it, this isn't something you should do instead of...

I reserved a 18:30 timeslot and arrived there on time. At arrival, there was a huge line and I had to wait around 20-30 minutes in order to enter, despite having a reservation. It didn't look like the wait was too long afterwards, so I recommend to come a little bit after opening time (which is 18:30).

The view is really pretty, even on the road from Osaka Metro. However at opening time, it is already dark. The area has steps and uneven footing that you may not be able to see because of how dark it is, so wear comfortable shoes. I wore comfortable sandals and it was not a problem, but everyone else wore sneakers.

The garden itself is huge but does not have a lot of attractions. If you take your time with the attractions, it will maybe take 1 to 1.5 hours to finish. If you just look and leave, you can finish in as fast as 15 minutes. Because I entered with a lot of people, there were a lot of other tourists that were noisy so expect that if you are coming especially during touristy months.

They have vending machines inside with both cold and hot drinks. There are some benches but not many and you will be walking quite a lot so be prepared for it.

The view however is really amazing. Each attraction and art has their own music which is calming to listen to. It's an ephemeral experience and well...