Tokyo from the tower

Press, 3 February 1987, Page 12

Tokyo from the tower

| By

DIANE PROUT

Unless you fly in by daylight, the best way to get an aerial impression of Tokyo is from the observation deck of the Tokyo Tower. Clive James’ description of the city as “infinitely elaborate printed circuits” is magnified a hundred-fold as you wander round the glassed-in platform that gives a stupendous panorama of this sprawling metropolis. It does not pay to go on New Year’s Day however, when every Japanese family seems to be there. The queues to the elevators, which in one minute lift visitors 150 metres to the observation deck, are indescribable. After climbing the hundreds of stairs in biting winds, the heat of the public gallery, packed with human flesh, hits like a blast furnace. You can only inch your way round, pressing up against the glass to get the view of a life-time

The highest independent steel tower in the world at 333 metres, Tokyo Tower transmits all eight', television stations, and three FM and two AM radio stations. Japanese Railways and the Government use the Tower for radio communications.

Atmospheric conditions in Tokyo are monitored by instruments at different heights above ground level. These measure wind direction and velocity, temperature and sulphur dioxide concentrations. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department has cameras mounted on top of the tower to monitor traffic and provide the information needed to control traffic on the expressways and other main arteries.

Lighter than the Eiffel Tower, Tokyo Tower is solid enough to withstand the strongest earthquake and 90 metres-per-second winds — which is reassuring when you’re up there. Even so, visitors need a head for heights and many a person suffers from vertigo long before the top. On a clear day you can see Mount Fuji. The Sumida River and Tokyo Bay sparkle directly below.

It is a marvellous way to get a perspective on the 23 ku (wards) and cho (neighbourhoods) which frustrate the westerner used to the urban grid. From the tower, Tokyo is a fantastic space-city — a vortex of human activity, a giant spider-web of elevated expressways, railways and highways. Visitors wonder how people can live, work and play in such a dense complexity of concrete. One wonders too what sort of people have rebuilt a city which has been destroyed on at least six major occasions in its 400 year history by fire, flood, earthquake, and war.

The variety of architectural form and function is most marked at this height. From the skyscrapers of Shinjuku to the National Jingu Stadium, whick “combines the strength of a BuddNist temple with the soaring deli-

cacy of a Shinto shrine” according to one guide book, the contrast is infinite. Descend to the Tokyo Tower Building having had your 400 yen’s worth and you can spend another 700 yen (about $8) visiting the Wax Museum on the third floor or the Aquarium on the first floor. Restaurants, cafes and souvenir shops plus an Information Centre take up the first and second floor. Showrooms, Government Information, a display centre, and private offices occupy the fourth and fifth.

On the roof-top before the stairway to the observatory are a playground and more shops. Hot-dog stands, typical of the Japanese enthusiasm for American-style fast food do a roaring trade in the icy wind, but the results are disappointing. The batter looks tempting enough, but is doughy; the sausage is anaemic and tasteless. It is at night, however, that the Tokyo Tower is most magical. By day it is an engineering masterpiece of orange interlacing steel planes and curves, strongly functional and strictly practical. At nightfall it becomes a beacon, an ethereal landmark of lacework and light, a fitting symbol of the city.

□sane Prout, of Ashburton, recently a month, touring in Japan.