00:00:00 John Daub: Live and that is Tokyo Tower. So I'm here at Roppongi Midtown and in about one minute they're going to start a really beautiful Christmas illumination down there. I've got a pretty good spot. You can see right there, that dark area—that's where all the lights are going to take place and we're just about a minute away. I'm probably the youngest person here. Everyone is a little bit older than me, let's just say, but that's what you get when you come here early. The sun has just set here in Tokyo. About 30 minutes ago it was a lot lighter.

00:00:50 John Daub: You can see the area. This is Roppongi Midtown, pretty much the center of the city. That there is the docoMo Tower. I believe that's Shinjuku over in that direction and I just showed you Tokyo Tower which is on the other side. So we're pretty much in the center and it's just a little bit of a different view. I believe we're about 30 seconds away. It's, believe it or not, really warm today. The weather has been going in and out between cold and hot and today it's sort of warm, which is nice because I don't need to bundle up too much.

00:01:29 John Daub: Now this light show goes on. I don't know if they're gonna have copyrighted music so I can't tell you for sure whether or not this is gonna be playable, but if you're watching it live you're definitely gonna be able to see it. This event goes on from now until the 25th of December, which is Christmas, so it doesn't go on past the holidays. They just turned it on. The lights just went on. That means it was really close. That wasn't on a minute ago. This is exciting.

00:02:07 John Daub: It's started. There's a globe in the middle. There's the 5 p.m. bell for kids to go home. Wow, it's beautiful. Don't look into the lights. Wow, they say there's 500,000 LEDs. Let's go down there and see if we can get a better view from the ground level. It's exciting, isn't it? Alright, come on. Christmas is here! Christmas in the city of Tokyo.

00:03:04 John Daub: Once again, I'm in Roppongi Midtown, which is the center of the city. And they have this really beautiful... Oh gosh, I just want to stay right here. I know there's not a lot to stop on the stairs. Alright, I'm going to try to get a better view. Whoa, we're in space. This is the final frontier. Whoa. I don't know how long the performance is, the LED light performance, but they say there's over 500,000 LED lights.

00:04:04 John Daub: Oh, this mysterious alien-looking globe in the center is steaming. Awesome. Is it going to hatch? That'd be pretty cool. Very space-like. It feels like we're in a different planet right now. Whoa! This is very cool. It does not seem Christmassy, though. It seems like icy. Oh, it's a really deep blue. Over there it says Toshiba. Sponsored by Toshiba. Thank you, Toshiba. Is there more?

00:06:07 John Daub: Here it comes. This is the most alien-looking Christmas light display ever. All of these LED lights. Again, there's over 500,000 of them. A scene out of Tron. It's cool from the corner because you can see some of the city. Hold on. I'm going to take you to the other side here. Oh, there's Tokyo Tower. You see it on the top right? Oh, the alien globe is smoking again. It really is pretty.

00:09:06 John Daub: All the LEDs are placed on a mat laid out on the park ground here. And you can see over there, over in this direction. That's Midtown. You can see all the people watching from the shopping mall. Again, once again, over 500,000 LED lights. Evolution is inevitable. So someone is complaining that it's 480p. Let me tell you something. This is live. Enjoy it.

00:11:02 John Daub: Once again, you can see Tokyo Tower right here. And we're pretty center. Very cool. So I'm glad I had a chance to share this with you. This is taking place at Tokyo Midtown until December 25th. Thank you, Coffee Dude, for the super chat. If only you could see that from the middle. I know. I would totally run into the center. But I would probably get arrested because there's police officers all over the place for security reasons. But it's cool.

00:11:41 John Daub: It looks like a roller coaster up there. Let's go up there. Shall we? Let's go take a look and see what's up there by this over the skull-looking thing. That kid does not like the light. They're messengers from the future, my son. It's just scary. I'm getting closer to the alien globe in the center. I want to stand on top of it and proclaim some sort of statement about the future. Go to the egg.

00:12:56 John Daub: The lights here, layered. You see those white lights on top? It's really beautiful. It's the biggest disco ball I think I've ever seen. This is the most beautiful light, ever. This would be a great place for a party. I guess it just repeats until midnight. I'm waiting for some fireworks. We were here before this started. It's pretty cool to see the transformation of the city.

00:13:42 John Daub: I'm now at the very top of the display and we're gonna look back at Tokyo Midtown. You see the amazing blue hue. The lights coming from 500,000 LED lights towards me have turned blue like the Cookie Monster. So here's the view from the back. Again, there's a Toshiba sign in the center. Oh, it's off. Oh, wait, it's come back on. I guess it just repeats in a cycle until 11 p.m. So this light goes on until 11.

00:14:14 John Daub: This is the other side from the back going towards the shopping mall, Tokyo Midtown. Well, it's more than a shopping mall. This is where a lot of Fujifilm and a lot of other big businesses have their offices here. It's one of the taller buildings in the city. It's also the location of this beautiful Christmas display until the 25th. And no Disney music this time. Just music from another world. This is the music, I think, in the 1960s that they also considered space and epic for the future as well. Because I remember going to Tokyo's Epcot Center in Walt Disney World and they had this sort of music going on. It truly is the future. It's space. Space sounds like this.

00:15:10 John Daub: And we're right on top of the Toshiba light. There's a Toshiba light. It's pretty cool. I'm glad they put this on. Kudos to Toshiba. So this is not the Osmo. I bought a new one. This is the Zhiyun Smooth Q. This is a new stabilizer. My Osmo has left this world. I should put it in the center and make it as a sacrifice for the aliens inside the globe. Because my Osmo did not make it. Bye bye Osmo. Hello Smooth Q. It's doing a pretty good job.

00:16:27 John Daub: Oh now I'm really close to the globe. I haven't been this close before. Of all the LED lights. And that's weird because LED lights don't give off much heat. But when there's 500,000 of them, I guess they generate. Makes you wonder how long it took them to set this up. It's almost a waste to take it down. They should leave it up well past Christmas, until the spring maybe. Oh you can see, I guess they also have these lights at the base right here. They have these other colored lights. I guess that adds depth to the globe.

00:17:16 John Daub: But once again for those tuning in now, there's over 500,000 LED lights here in the center of Tokyo, in Midtown. And this display will be going on until Christmas. So just a couple of weeks. Very cool. That's pretty much all I wanted to show you. The egg is here. Is it an egg or is it a globe? What is it? It's very hard to know. On the other side is Tokyo Tower, which is also pretty cool. It's one of the symbols of Tokyo. You can see that year round.

00:18:03 John Daub: This is a new stabilizer that I got. It's not doing a bad job. I like the Osmo because I was able to have an extension rod and extend it so you wouldn't be so close to my face. But this is okay too. So I'm going to go upstairs one more time to the top and then we're going to end the live stream. Midtown is one of the newer shopping areas. I think it opened up about nine years ago. There's the Ritz-Carlton, I believe. There's a lot of luxury hotels in this area.

00:18:54 John Daub: Alright, here it is from above. I don't know if these really can be considered Christmas lights. Because the color doesn't really say holiday. It says something else. It doesn't say Christmas to me. Blue really is a spectacular color. But the music, there's no Christmas music. There's no feeling behind it. And this is part of the problem with Christmas in Tokyo for me. To me, this is just basically a light up. It's just an illumination of a city center. It's not really Christmas to me. Maybe Frozen. But Frozen isn't a Christmas movie. It's a Frozen movie.

00:19:45 John Daub: So for me, personally, I don't get that Christmas spirit here in Tokyo. Which is why I'm going back home in a week. I'll be in New York. I'm trying to do a meet up. I'm not sure where. It might be on the 20th or the 21st of December. So if you want to do a meet up in New York City, and if you're in New York City and you have time, I won't be around for too long. But I gotta find a place to meet up. And I'm gonna put an event page on Facebook. So if you want, you can go to the Facebook page. Or Instagram Live. I often do updates there. And you'll be able to see where we are in New York City. If you want to come and meet for a little bit, get a picture.

00:20:25 John Daub: I had a lot of fun meeting people in Malaysia last month. And it'll be nice to meet people in my own home country, in America. Right now it's across the Pacific and an entire continent. I gotta fly 14 hours from Tokyo to New York City. It's gonna be a long ride. But it's really great to be back home in the United States for Christmas with my family. So, yeah. That's it from Roppongi Midtown. You can see the lights right there. It's pretty impressive from the second floor. But it's just as cool down there.

00:21:00 John Daub: I think it would be really awesome if I could see it from up there. That's the top of Midtown. But I don't have access. This is a new stabilizer. Alright. Thanks everybody for joining me on this live stream. I'm gonna go in, get something to eat. And then I have a driving test practice for my driving exam on the 14th. So I'm gonna take it, part 2. Hopefully I pass it. Merry Christmas everybody. Have a great day or night, wherever you are. A great week ahead. It's already Monday here.