BODY: Japan's most famous Christmas market is about to get a Kanto makeover. Yokohama Red Brick Warehouse has announced that this year's "Christmas Market in Yokohama Red Brick Warehouse" will fold in a Pokémon collaboration — "Choose! Pokémon Illumination 1025" — running November 20 through December 25.
The tie-in marks the Pokémon series' 30th anniversary, counted from the February 1996 release of Pokémon Red and Green on Game Boy. Organizers are promising "special illumination" built around the milestone, installed in the free-entry Christmas Village zone at Shinko Chuo Plaza, the park space just beside the warehouse buildings. Specific designs are still under wraps; the full reveal is scheduled for mid-November, roughly a week before opening.
That "1025" in the title is not a date. It is the current number of Pokémon in the National Pokédex — every species from Bulbasaur through the Scarlet and Violet DLC additions. Paired with the verb erabu ("to choose"), it strongly suggests some form of public vote or visitor-selected element determining which Pokémon appear in the lights. Organizers have not confirmed the mechanism.
The surrounding market is a serious operation in its own right: roughly 60 food and goods stalls modeled on German Christmas markets, with a ticketed main zone starting around ¥500 and free-access areas alongside it. Food and merchandise are charged separately.
The insider take
Yokohama has quietly become Pokémon's second home city. The Pokémon World Championships landed here in 2023, and for years the summer "Pikachu Outbreak" parades flooded Minato Mirai with hundreds of costumed Pikachu — an event locals still measure crowd chaos against. Which is exactly why the free-zone placement matters. The Red Brick Christmas Market went ticketed in 2022 precisely because it had become unmanageable, and putting a Pokémon anniversary installation in the unticketed village is either a generous gesture or an invitation to gridlock on December weekends. Go on a weekday evening before December 10, or accept that you will be photographing Pikachu over somebody's shoulder.
Originally reported by GAME Watch (Japanese).