I never used to think much of Christmas light displays. When I looked up festivals on sites like Rurubu, the illuminations were always clogging up the listings and crowding out the ‘real’ events. The other day, however, I decided to see the illuminations at Tokyo Midtown shopping centre, titled “Midtown Christmas 2010 ~ Dareka ga Dareka no Santa Claus.”
That it had an actual title should have been a clue.
The first thing you see is a garden full of trees lit up in Christmas lights, a mixture of yellow, blue and purple. With the Tokyo skyline as the backdrop, I was pleasantly surprised by how futuristic it seemed. If you ever hear me saying something like ‘wow, this could be straight out of a novel about a dystopian future!’ then it’s a compliment.
What I didn’t realise, was that I hadn’t even got to the main event.
In front of a structure vaguely reminiscent of the alien mothership from Alien (once you see it you can’t unsee it), was a sea of blue lights. Classical music played in the background, but it was mostly drowned out by people yelling how pretty it was. The floor lights changed into spirals and even appeared to rise up as steam poured out of the centre. Ahead of us, the trees lit up and stars seemed to shoot past them.
I continued onwards and up onto a bridge that led into the shopping centre. It was crowded with people watching the display from above, who hadn’t seemed to notice they had a perfect view of Tokyo Tower behind them.
Inside Tokyo Midtown were more illuminations. There was a mirrored box which turned the coloured lights inside it into an infinite matrix. And neon tubes which were just the right distance apart that when they lit up in the right way, they suggested Christmas landscapes and messages.
If, like me, you don’t go to Roppongi much and don’t know where Midtown is, it’s just in front of Roppongi Station on the Oedo Line. However, I found it not too difficult to walk from Shinjuku Station, using a good map on my phone. The illuminations are, of course, free to see and will continue until December 26th.
