Tokyo Sky Tree and Penguins

For reasons still unknown to me the Tokyo Sky Tree opened to the public on the 22nd of May (2012), which happens to be my birthday! I applied for a ticket to go up to the viewing platform but didn’t make the cut out of the one million (? more?) applications. Nevertheless, I took the day off from work to check out what the fuss was all about and to be there. I think they opened the Sky Tree on a weekday in order to avoid millions of people showing up.

Unfortunately (or fortunately?) it was raining heavily the entire day. Nevertheless they said later in the news that 220,000 people came throughout the day. They had expected 200,000. Good estimate. I have no clue how many they are expecting for this weekend.

I was surprised to know that indeed 220,000 people came which showed that the facility can handle that amount of people without a problem. It was full of course but not scarily full and there was no hectic or panic in the air.

Those poor chaps who managed to get a ticket for the tower’s viewing platform itself though have seen NOTHING. Well, nothing much but clouds.

The complex consists of the tower and a shopping mall around it plus an aquarium.

The escalator construction when coming up from Oshiage station is amazing (see the Escher-like photo on Flickr) and at their bottom a giant canvas depicting the complex from above greets you (see photo). B1 till 4th floor is the shopping center which is called sora-machi = Sky Town. In Japanese there is no real “l” or”r” but a sound in between and depending on which kind of roman letter transcription you use you write a word like “sora” = sky either “sora” or “sola”. The more common transcription is “r” rather than “l” but I think they decided on the “l” because it is a little play on words with “sola” sounding like “solar”, which has something to do with the sky after all.

There is nothing really special about the shopping mall, it’s geared towards a tourist crowd but also towards locals and there is basically something for everyone. The noise level in the whole shopping town was gargantuan, since the newly opened shops had all their staff standing around offering bits of food in the food court and holding up special opening presents (tinker) in the fashion district trying to lure customers into their shops. I went outside once in a while to catch glimpses of the tower but the rain didn’t stop and was very heavy at times.

On level four of the complex is the Sumida Aquarium and there was a guide shouting that it’s not crowded at the moment and you can get in immediately. I used that opportunity and went into the aquarium and I’m glad I did, because this aquarium is of course super new and state of the art. It’s not really big but very well laid out and has excellent facilities. It’s geared a bit towards science and there are several “labs” where staff is present and explains things to you and shows you how they raise jelly fish or how they take care of their corals and so on. The main attraction of the aquarium is a colony of penguins next to four sea lions.

It was about to be feeding time for the sea lions and I had the opportunity to chat with one of the animal handlers. They have 47 penguins and all animals moved into the facility at the end of April. At first the penguins didn’t want to get into the water and the animal handlers had to persuade them with fish The aquarium, along with the rest of the whole complex was open to the public for the first day, but the penguins and sea lions seemed un-phased by the people around and the penguins had gotten used to their basin and were swimming around quite happily it seemed to me. Very cute little guys. They get 10 years old in the wild, but in captivity they can get up to 20 years old. Same for the sea lions, they get about 20 years old in the wild and can reach 30 in captivity, the animal handler said.

I learned something interesting from him too about the sea lions. I often felt a bit sorry for them that they are being trained to perform tricks, but the handler said that they need that. In captivity they don’t have to hunt for food or escape from orcas and they simply get too bored and have nothing to do and therefore, to stimulate them, they are being trained to perform some tricks. So it’s also for their good, not only for entertainment of humans. I don’t know if that’s really true, but it kind of makes sense. The four sea lions in the new aquarium are very young yet, the oldest is 3 years and they didn’t know many tricks yet, which, very Japanese, the animal handler apologized for I thought they were already pretty good though, they followed hand signs, and directions to pick up their fish.

Back in the shopping mall I found a window in the 3rd or 4th floor that allows you to take a look at the sky tree’s actual structure. (see photos) It’s a tree indeed, and that mesh construct looks very stable to me and I sort of can believe that the tower will withstand even a magnitude 7 earthquake under its feet… It’s a highly impressive construct and I’m looking forward to getting up there onto its two viewing platforms some time in winter, when hopefully the first rush for getting onto the tower is over