teamLab Planets

First of all, a very unique experience in an art museum. It's the most fun any of my family have had in an art museum. I will say that the experience is a must-do if you have the chance. That being said, there are a few things I would like to point out.

It was easier to get tickets than Borderless. But it was CROWDED, as all tourist attractions are now-a-days. But trying to enjoy a museum with a crowd is not fun. On top of that, I'd say 95% of the customers were foreign tourists (myself included, but I live here).

While that may not always be a bad thing, in this case, there were many people ignoring signs and directions and doing as they pleased. While the rest of us were being ushered along and told to keep moving and not stop for selfies, the employees weren't doing anything about the people laying in the middle of the walkways or blocking the paths while they were doing their social media photoshoots.

There were signs saying not to lean against the walls, but there were people laying against them, touching the mirrors with their hands and leaving prints all over the place. That's not the only cleanliness issue. We were also told we could only bring cameras and smartphones into the exhibits, which is more than reasonable. But in the water area (this was near the end of the day), there was trash floating on top of the water, and my son stepped on something sharp in the water. When he pulled it up, it was someone's lost acrylic nail with a dangling metal cross on it.

While waiting in line for the hanging flower room, you can see tracks of skin flakes all over the floor. My kids were joking about not having open cuts on your feet, or you'd come home with a foot fungus... and I don't think that would be far off. They didn't sanitize the slippers they have you wear outside before passing it to the next set of people, and you are barefoot for all the rest of the exhibits.

And as lovely as the photos are listed on the website, there will never be a time when there are just 2 people in the room. So the photos were misleading because it made each space seem much larger. The flower hanging room had people crawling on the floor in a crowded space just to find a spot to take pictures.

While I would like everyone to enjoy their trip to Japan and have fun at this museum (which I still highly recommend because it IS fun), I think the museum needs to cut back on how many people they let in at a time, especially if they are ok with people taking up extra space and time for their mini photoshoots. Because they shouldn't be rushing the rest of us through while letting people who paid the same admission price lay all over the place and do what they want. And they definitely should have cleaning time blocks throughout the day because it's gross seeing the foot flakes and food wrappers (which shouldn't even be in there) hanging about your bare skin.

Also, there are lots of mirror floors. If you're wearing a skirt or dress, they have rental shorts for free for you to wear. I went there knowing that, but while in line, I'd say 50% of the other women in my group didn't know that. I don't know how many of them took up the offer of rental shorts though, because there were still a lot of mini-dress wearing social media influencer-types wearing their own clothes in the room with the most mirrors.

After being rushed through by the workers, the entire experience was 30 minutes total, both halves. Luckily, once you're in, you can go through it again if you want. It was still crowded, but we went through the water area again to see sections we knew we had missed. It's on our second run through the water area that I noticed all the trash and the acrylic nail issue.