Climbing Sky Trees
I finally went up my birthday tree! Now what does that mean?
The Tokyo Sky Tree – a 634 meter high tower and thus the at the moment highest in the world (not counting the highest building in Dubai of course) was opened on the 22nd of May 2012. Now the 22nd of May happens to be my birthday 
Thus I feel a certain connection to the tower. I entered the lottery to get onto the viewing platform of the thing but of course lost. Nevertheless I took a day off last year for my birthday and went to see the opening craze. Lucky me that I did not have a ticket to go up, since I would have seen zero… it was raining like hell on that day and the top of the tower, including the viewing platform, was shrouded in clouds.
Ever since, I had this – I must try to get onto the Sky Tree finally – plan, but as things go I just didn’t come around to it. I tried again to book a ticket over New Year 2013 but came too late and everything was booked out again.
Now it happened that I attended an external 2 day seminar which took place only five subway stations away from the Sky Tree and when I saw the beast on the 19th from the 10th floor of the conference building in all its glory, I made the spontaneous decision to try to get up after the seminar was over for the day.
Thus, unprepared, only equipped with my iPhone camera and dragging my work buggy bag behind me, I rushed to Oshiage station after the seminar and neither looking left nor right straight through the “Sola Machi” shopping center to the Sky Tree entrance in the falling dusk. Going there on a weekday is the best thing still. No clue how long the day-ticket queue is during the weekend. The hall in front of the ticket booth is quite enormous (you see only a fraction of it on the pic at Flickr) and filled with meandering rails to keep the crowd in check. A sign at the day ticket entrance promised an only 20-30 min wait. Very good.
The elevator up to the main viewing platform at 350m is a work of engineering art in itself. You don’t feel a single vibration while the elevator shoots up to 350m in 55 seconds at a peak speed of 600m/min. Even the ear plopping is not so bad.
The main viewing platform is huge and I arrived at the last bits of sunset facing east. Due to the masses of people it took some time to reach the west facing side of the tower, which looks at Shinjuku and dusk had proceeded quite a lot until I got there.
You can check out a whole series of photos on my Flickr account. One peculiarity of the Sky Tree is that it has no significant higher buildings standing around it. The 200m or so high buildings of Shinjuku are pretty far away and almost did not stand out in the sea of lights. The only higher building close by is the Tokyo Sky Tree East Tower that looks tiny from above despite its 30 floors.
Of course I had to go up to the second viewing platform at 450m height. You can only purchase a ticket to get further up on the 350m height station. By the way, to get up to 350m costs 2000 Yen (20 USD) and further up to 450m an additional 1000 Yen.
The elevator further up is pretty awesome. When you stand in its back you can look into the elevator shaft via a glass ceiling. It was lit in blue (wonder if they change color sometimes) and reminded me of a shaft of the Enterprise 
When you stand at the doors you have the privilege to look out while going up, which is also great. You can’t really steer whether you end up at the door or the back of this elevator due to the masses of people and both times I was in the back. But over the heads of people I managed a shot out of the doors as well.
The second viewing platform is much smaller of course and less people than I thought bothered going up the final 100 meters so I enjoyed the second platform more than the first. From 450m height Tokyo looks pretty far away, almost like from aboard a plane, and in the meantime it had become truly dark. The sea of lights in every direction is only interrupted by black bands of rivers and the dark of Tokyo bay to the south. I found the view down the tower to the main viewing platform also very impressive.
The excellent weather had of course also played a role in deciding to spontaneously go up the tower and a big full moon shone down on the city. It even happened to be the special full moon of mid-autumn and people like to do moon-viewing and eat dumplings in Asia on that day. The photos do not do the moon justice, I’d have needed a better camera for that. It was a perfect and beautiful full moon. On the Shinjuku side even Venus was visible, if, due to the light “pollution”, not a single star.
Once you make the round around the tower and before lining up at the elevator to go down they had a funny thing happening which probably only works at night. They are projecting time, date, “welcome to Tokyo Sky Tree” and other nicknacks in white onto the night sky beyond (See Flickr pic of the date).
After arriving back at the 350m level I took a last few pics at the small glass floor section and road back down to the ground.
The Sky Tree is quite an amazing construct and I definitely want to go up again during full daylight. Let’s see if I don’t forget to book daytime tickets for the coming New Year season
