Tokyo Visit, Part 2

Our first trip to Tokyo had two destinations: the Senso-ji Temple, and nearby Tokyo Skytree. The Skytree is the second tallest building in the world after the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. The Skytree stands at 2080 feet, with the highest observation point at 1480 feet. Luckily for us, the weather was really nice and we had a pretty good visibility on our trip.

The tower was about a 45 minute walk from the temple, and it was pretty easy to find, it being the tallest building in Tokyo by a huge margin. Our walk to the Skytree was also full of some pretty cool sights.

We had to cross the Sumida river to get to the Skytree and there were some really cool bridges spanning the water. Every bridge we could see had some nice foot paths built in, and I even saw some bridges only for pedestrians. Tokyo is definitely a city made for walking.

On the other side of the river was this really beautiful park. Walking through it, you could almost forget that you were in the middle of the largest city in the world, despite the building towering around you. This was one of the first really nice weekends of the year, so the park was full of Japanese eating picnic lunches and just enjoying the weather in general.

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After the park, we were almost at the tower. It really did start to look impressive as we got closer to it. It’s easily the tallest building we’ve ever seen (maybe the tallest building we’ll ever see!) and there was a good long while we just couldn’t see the top anymore. The tower itself was super cool and has a lot of stuff going on. There’s a massive train station and underground mall beneath it, of which we only saw a fraction of when we left. There’s also an aquarium, lots of street-level shops, and the tower itself hosts numerous TV and radio broadcasts (also another Pokemon Center). But we didn’t come to see any of that; we wanted to gaze at Tokyo in all its majesty.

The view was seriously spectacular. Tokyo can get super hazy, but we had a pretty clear view. It does get better, so much so that you can sometimes see Mount Fuji (for a 12,000 foot mountain, Fuji certainly is elusive!) but the view was almost cooler with a little bit of haze. The city looked like it just went on forever. A third of the country lives in this metropolitan area, and you could tell how they all fit.

We spent a few hours at the top of the tower. There was a lot to see (other than just the view), with plenty of exhibits and events. There was a Evangelion (anime series) event going on when we visited, so there were a lot of giant robots and anime figures everywhere. The boys really had a good time too (after waking up from a well-earned nap). Definitely worth the price of entry.

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Overall it was an awesome day trip and we really want to go stay there for a few days and explore some more.

BRB, out to Japan – Taylor