Illuminations - Part 1?

In Japan, Christmas is more of a holiday for couples than spending time with family.

It is also a time for lights. Lots of lights.

Tokyo has a lot of イルミネーション (illuminations) in different districts. It's basically like a giant Light Wars (get it, family? haha). Most stations have lights outside of them. This is what it has looked like outside of Musashisakai Station for about a month now:

(My camera is horrible in dark lighting, sorry!)

There are also bigger displays that can use as many as 300,000 LED lights in some areas. There are places that put on full-out light shows. A friend and I decided to go out last night and try to see some of these famous illuminations.

The one we mainly wanted to see was just outside of the newly-redone Tokyo Station. Some spectacular 3D show was supposed to happen. When we got to the station, though, it was crowded beyond belief. People were shoving each other and you had to fight from being pulled away in a tide of people. When we finally got out of the mess, we learned that the light show had been canceled because so many people showed up. I can sort of understand, now...if more people had come for the light show, the station could have been a really dangerous place.

Disappointed, but not defeated (why am I being so dramatic I don't know this is my blog), we journeyed to Shiodome, a short walk away from Tokyo Station. It was also crowded wherever we went, but not as bad as in the station. We found one of the main shows - a light show projected on the side of a building. I don't know what some of the video footage had to do with Christmas (Cinderella? A whale in the ocean?) but it was cute. We started out in the back of the crowd, but pushed our way to the front once the first show had ended, because we couldn't see any of the lights that were on the ground.

I tried to take a bit of video, too, just to give you an idea of it.

We went to a couple of other displays before deciding to call it a night - it was pretty exhausting trying to navigate through all the crowds.

When I went to hang out with other friends and eat cake in Tokyo Station, we heard an announcement saying tonight's show had been canceled as well. Who knew light shows could be so dangerous? Haha.

I'm heading out into Shinjuku with a friend tomorrow to see if we can hit some of the light displays there, so I'll try to take more pictures if my camera holds out! I'm sorry it's not the best quality. I hope you at least see how much Tokyo likes Christmas lights, lol