One of my current projects recently took me to Japan for a few days. As with many work trips, the chances to take a look around were a little limited. However, I did get a bit of spare time to play with on the day I was flying back to the US. A colleague of mine showed me a little of what Tokyo has to offer before we headed back to Narita to fly home.

We headed out to explore the Tokyo Skytree. This is a huge tower that has just been built and, while it is a popular attraction, we timed our visit well and were able to head straight in. First, a few stats about the tower itself. It opened in 2012 after a four year construction period. It has a main viewing area about 350m up. (That is about 1,100’ for those of you not working in metric.) There is a secondary viewing area at about 450m if you weren’t high enough before. The top of the tower is 634m. This thing is not small.

As an engineer, it is an interesting structure. It is a tubular framework which transitions from something close to circular near the top to something more triangular near the base. The transition is very subtle and it took a while to even see it as I looked from the ground. The elevator to the first viewing level was both fast and smooth. You were hardly aware you were moving apart from the occasional ear popping! It really is something very impressive and I shall post more about my visit there shortly.