Tokyo Tower

My Taiwanese friend was visiting me in Japan for 9days and I am going to write about places that we went....I am going to start with Tokyo Tower.

Tokyo tower is in Minato-ku (港区）There are few stations that you can walk from. Some of the closest would be Akabanebashi Station, Kamiyacho Station and Onarimon Station. You can see the details on their website.

The height of Tokyo Tower is 333m but the Observatories are at 150m and 250m. It costs 820yen to go to the main observatory (at 150m) and another 600yen to go to the special observatory. My personal opinion is that Tokyo's sky is dirty and I did not see the point to go to the higher one ( probably won't be able to see so far) and if you want to save some money, then better go to the Metropolitan Government Building. It is free of charge and its height is higer than the main observatory of Tokyo Tower. If you are interested, follow the link and check out the details.

When you first goes up to the Observatory, you would be at the second level of the Observatory, and it has touch screens that shows what you are looking at. It also shows the old maps and how it changed over the time. It is quite interesting. On the way out, you need to go to the first level of the Observatory (i.e. One level down of where you entred the Observatory) and there are much less people there. Just enjoy the view on the 2nd level and play with the screen, and then take pictures on the first level. AND the interesting part of the 1st level is that there are few glass windows that are facing down and you can see the bottom of the tower (see the picture on the left) It is scary!! You can even stand on it but I found it quite scary!

If you want to go to the special observatory, you buy the ticket to the main observatory first and at the main observatory, you can buy another ticket to go upto the special observatory.

Tokyo tower have other attractions like Max Museum, Guinness World Records Museum etc but there are lots of Omiyage Shops (Souvenir shops). For Japanese girls, Hello Kitty, Stitch, and other characters' pencils, key holders etc that are specially made for Tokyo Tower and other Tokyo tourists areas are popular. For Japanese People in general, Tokyo Banana is quite popular. Should go and look at pictures here. There is banana flavoured castard like cream inside. If you are visiting people outside Tokyo, this could be the nice 'hand souvenir' (Te-Miyage).

Parkings are not as expensive as other tourists areas in Tokyo and much cheaper than Kyoto.

Hope people will visit there and see the city of Tokyo. It is interesting to see Tokyo. You would see the big buildings but also see the little houses in low cities (Shitamachi) and see the contrast. I was surprised to find out that there are lots of graves around Tokyo Tower....

Anyway, see you later!!