Tokyo; Thursday, 17 April, 2025
Refreshed I headed out of the hotel and back over to Kinshicho station to catch the metro one stop up the line to Oshiage station, though perhaps better known by it’s suffix – Tokyo Skytree. The Skytree is the tallest freestanding broadcast tower in the world, the tallest structure in Japan and at 634.0m the third tallest building in the world.
Whilst the tower itself goes up to 634m, the viewing platform is barely halfway up at 350m, but that felt like a good a place as anywhere to take in the views of the city and attempt to get my bearings in one of the worlds largest and most densely packed cities.
I’d timed it to be at the tower after sunset as I realised that it was likely to be very busy in the tower with people wanting to catch sunset from a height. Either everyone else had the same idea, or lots of people had bad timing as the queue was still quite long and it took a good 15 minutes from arriving at the start of the queue to getting into a lift up to the viewing platform.
I spent quite a bit of time taking in the views of the city, though perhaps going up first time at night wasn’t the best idea as I didn’t really have a clear idea what I was looking at, but it was still impressive to see just how massive and tightly packed the city is.
I spent about an hour looking round and then descended down to the floor for taking the lift back down, only to discover that pretty much everyone else was also leaving about the same time, as it again took nearly 15 minutes from joining the back of the queue to being in a lift heading down.
As with the Kyoto Tower the Skytree is located above a shopping complex and out on the 4th floor rooftop patio was a street food market, so I decided to stop there to grab some dinner before heading back down to the metro to catch the subway back to the hotel and a very welcoming bed.
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