Roppongi Hills Christmas Market

The Roppongi Hills Christmas Market is a German-style Christmas market held every winter at Oyane Plaza, the roofed plaza of Roppongi Hills in Minato, Tokyo. Mori Building organizes it, with the support of the German Embassy, the German National Tourist Office, the Goethe-Institut Tokyo and the German Chamber of Commerce in Japan. The organizers describe it as one of the longest-established Christmas markets in Japan.

Highlights

The market is laid out as a copy of the Christmas market in Stuttgart, which the organizers say is the largest in the world. About ten stalls take part. The best known is Käthe Wohlfahrt, a German shop that sells traditional Christmas decorations all year round; here it has ornaments, snow globes and incense smokers. Other stalls sell spice decorations made with cinnamon and cloves, a craft handed down in the Salzburg region for about 200 years, along with ornaments, incense and handmade soft toys gathered from Germany and its neighbours. At Joy Rack Club, buyers put together their own Christmas set from figures of Santa, reindeer and snowmen and small ball trees.

The food stalls keep to German dishes. Metzgerei Sasaki sells sausages made by a butcher who qualified in Germany as a Geselle, following southern German methods, and pâtés from a chef who has won a world pâté-en-croûte championship. König makes German street-food sausages from Japanese ingredients. At Frankfurter Haus Meister, the German chef Markus cooks the Christmas food of his home region: stew, freshly baked pretzels and a mulled apple wine. Schmatz pours beer from a brewery more than 150 years old, and POMMES by De Frites Staan has a winter menu of fries with a German Christmas theme. Glühwein, hot dogs and stollen fill out the rest, and a lunch set at a reduced price is sold at weekday lunchtimes. The market has its own mug each year, sold at some stalls on its own or with a drink.

The 2026 market: the 20th edition

The 2026 market is the 20th, and several stalls have made goods for the anniversary. Käthe Wohlfahrt brings a 2026 incense smoker in a Santa hat (¥12,000) and gives a small present to customers. Lasp Spice Decoration has an angel glass ball in two sizes (¥3,900 and ¥3,200). Metzgerei Sasaki cooks beef cheek braised in red wine with potato puree, made in small numbers and served from Friday to Sunday only.

The 2026 mug is green with a red star pattern and has a 20th anniversary logo printed on the inside. It is sold in limited numbers for ¥1,700. Mazda, the market's sponsor, runs a Christmas photo booth inside the market.

Christmas lights around Roppongi Hills

The market is one part of Christmas at Roppongi Hills, where trees and illuminations go up across the complex. Keyakizaka (けやき坂), one of its streets, is lit for about 400 m with some 970,000 LEDs. Its display, called SNOW & BLUE, keeps to white and silver.

The Japan Racing Association (JRA) sponsors the Keyakizaka lights and puts on two displays of its own. In the planting beside Roppongi Hills Arena, a moving diorama called Hoshifuru Chiisana Holiday Town (星降る小さなHOLIDAY TOWN) shows a town of falling stars, where horses gather starlight from glowing rocky mountains and carry it to the town as Christmas lights. Near the Keyakizaka bridge, a video tells the same story, and a button beside it changes what plays on screen.

At 66 Plaza, lights cover the ground like a carpet, with champagne-gold lights in the trees around it. Mohri Garden (毛利庭園) is lit in two shades of gold laid out like flowers, with white lights scattered over them like snow.