It is getting colder day by day. How have you been? I would like to introduce the Marunouchi Illumination which I went with Accessible members the other day. It has been recognized as “the 2016 Tokyo night view heritage”. YUKORIN, who is a wheelchair user, was with us.
We got together in front of a tourist information center for foreign tourists at the Marunouchi north exit of JR Tokyo station on Saturday in the middle of last December.
Marunouchi Tour
It is a one-hour or 90-minute tour. The route is as follows.
Marunouchui → Mitsubishi brick square → Naka-dori Street → KITTE for the Christmas trees and the projection mapping.
We used a ramp at the Tokyo station to go in the direction of the Marunouchi building.
We dropped by the Marunouchi building to use a multipurpose toilet and see a Christmas tree briefly from the second floor. The first floor was jam-packed.
Marunouchi Naka-dori Street
After leaving the Marunouchi building, we walked the Marunouchi Naka-dori street. You can enjoy the illumination without watching out for cars running on the street because cars are prohibited to run on the street during the Illumination time. The lights were glowing a champagne gold color on the street to Yuraku-cho.
The lights are LED bulbs. Some of them save 30% of electricity use, which are called “New Eco-Illumination”, so the illumination is environmentally conscious. Steps on the street are only a few but it is paved with tiles, so wheelchairs seem to feel vibrations when moving on the street.
There were mobile food stalls on the street.
After proceeding a while, we arrived at the Mitsubishi brick square. There was a Christmas tree decorated with flowers.
Then we left the Brick square and returned to the direction of the Tokyo station on the same street we previously walked on.
KITTE
We entered KITTE which is the final destination of this tour. One of the biggest in-house Christmas trees in Japan was there as a feature of the event named “KITTE white tree program.”
A projection mapping projected on the glasses in front of the tree and a lightning-up program, which lights up the tree with various colors changing in line with music, are performed every 30 minutes. We could not see the projection mapping due to crowds, but we enjoyed the lighting-up.
That is my report of the tour. In the Marunouchi area, there aren’t that many steps and slopes indoors and outdoors. Therefore you can enjoy the illumination tour with wheelchair users. There were crowds but it was not overcrowded.However, it is recommendable to visit the illumination at night on a weekday or at the time just after the illumination starts on a weekend.
