Change—how we love it!
As a big change for 2025, I’m splitting my blog into two sections.
1. I will, of course continue writing travel posts like this one, featuring WOW places I’ve visited and related advice for personal transformation.
2. In a separate post, I’ll be sharing ideas I’ve gathered (from over 30 years as a teambulding trainer) for transforming your teams at work.
As I respect the sanctity of your email box, I’ll only write once or twice a week for category 1, and merely once a week for category 2. As the posts will be coming from different platforms, feel free to unsubscribe separately to either (or both). The last thing I want is to inspire resentment. (ie. “OMG, will this guy stop emailing me!!”) However, if you enjoy the way my mind works, I’ll keep on posting as long as you guys are reading. As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts, at dave_blum@hotmail.com.
Okay, on with today’s travel post…
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Wow Place #293: TeamLab Future Park, Okinawa, Japan
When I was a kid, it wasn’t exactly a badge of honor for a product to have “Made in Japan” inscribed on it. Let’s be honest here. Back in the 70s, a Japanese-made product tended to be pretty shoddy.
How things have changed.
Personally speaking, I only buy Japanese cars these days— they last forever, they rarely break down; I fully expect my 2020 Nissan Versa to reach 200,000 miles without a glitch. Japan’s reputation for quality and innovation extends all across the board — from cars to electronics to fine dining. The overwhelming feeling you get while on a visit to Japan is, “They sure do things better here!” One example of this design superiority is reflected in the care and attention the Japanese put into their extraordinary museums — like TeamLab Future Park in Okinawa.
To even label TeamLab Future Park a “museum” doesn’t quite do it justice. On their site, they call themselves “an educational project based on the concept of collaborative creation (co-creation)…an amusement park where people can enjoy creating the world freely with others.” That description hits a little bit closer to the mark than “museum.” From the moment you walk into the facility, you’re transported to a digitally-enhanced world. The lighting is dark, the floor a sinuous series of spongy peaks and valleys. And everywhere you look, there are bursts of color and movement. Exotic, digital creatures crawl, scurry and slither across the ground, walls and ceiling — replicating themselves, bumping into each other, generating spontaneous, technicolor bubbles, flowers, and waterfalls. And these are not just random animals all around you— they’re beasts of YOUR own creation!
Concocted mostly for kids (and their adult children), Future Park is a museum of creativity. Soon after entering the main room, you’re ushered by a young, enthusiastic staff member over to a well-lit design cubicle, where you sit down and choose from a variety of blank stencils: birds, lizards, snakes, etc. (I choose a lizard; Donica opts for a butterfly.) Your job now is to color in your stencil with a liquid crayon. As soon you’re done, you hand over your artwork to an attendant who promptly scans your masterpiece into the system; minutes later, miraculously, your artwork appears on the wall — completely animated! My own lizard scurries down the wall, changes direction abruptly when it reaches the ground and then sets out on a path of museum exploration! The effect is mesmerizing! How did they do this?!! For the rest of the day, I’m on the look out for my lizard. Is he still around? Where is he hiding? Will he even recognize me, his creator, if he sees me?
And that’s only room 1!
Future Park offers multiple spaces to explore and create. There’s the hopscotch room, where digital lily pads offer exotic effects when jumped on in the right order. There’s the Light Ball Orchestra room, where the balls not only change light and color as they collide, but also communicate with the balls hanging above them. As we’re visiting over the holidays, we’re treated to the seasonal “holiday sketch factory” room, dedicated to Santa’s Village, where you color in and animate Santa’s sleigh and reindeer. (For some reason, when you touch the presents in Santa’s sleigh, they come alive and leap out of the vehicle!)
Perhaps my favorite room is titled “Story of the Time when Gods are Everywhere.” For this one, guests touch Chinese digital characters floating down the wall, representing different mountains, trees, birds, etc. With each touch, the characters transform into lovely symbols that grow, swell, and influence the other symbols. For example, a bird symbol might land on a tree symbol…a sheep might run away from a dog…or dance as a child approaches. A sun might lighten the room, a moon might bring about near darkness. The effect is strange, mythological and highly mystical.
Near the exit, what kids’ museum would be complete without a slide – a digital one, in this case – with fireworks exploding on the wall when you reach the bottom.
I should note that TeamLab isn’t unique to Okinawa. In fact, TeamLab is an international art collective founded over 25 years ago with the purpose of helping people “transcend the boundaries in our perceptions of the world, of the relationship between the self and the world, and of the continuity of time.” You can find TeamLabs in Osaka, Tokyo and other Japanese cities, as well in the permanent collections of museums around the word, from Sydney to Helsinki, from LA to San Francisco, from New York to Istanbul.
I hear TeamLab Borderless in Tokyo is particularly fabulous. But can you animate a lizard there, I wonder?
(I have to admit that my wife and I are not a big museum-goers when we’re traveling. That’s what made TeamLab Future Park such a particular delight for us. It was so unexpected! Expectations can really do you in, can’t they – both in life and in travel? Where do expectations come from? Past experience, to be sure. But also from reviews, from friends, from critics. From our beliefs. Even from society itself. One of the great tasks of life is to use prior information intelligently, but at the same time, to let yourself have your own experience. To borrow a famous quotation, “trust (others’ opinions) but verify (with your own perceptions).”)
(Dave Blum is the creator of Dr. Clue Treasure Hunts, www.drclue.com, a teambuilding company featuring over 150 treasure hunt locations worldwide. He has visited over 40 countries in his 60+ years of life and plans to keep traveling until he gives up the ghost. Dave lives in Northern California with his wife, Donica, and their 17-year-old Maine Coon, Ava — an indoor cat who dreams of one day escaping captivity and exploring her own neighborhood Wow Places.)