The cherry blossoms were out when I made my way to Tokyo’s newest tourist attraction, but for once it was not the blooms that admiring urbanites were taking snaps of on their mobile phones. Instead, the handsets were aimed higher, at a technological marvel flowering above them.
At 634m high, Tokyo Skytree claims the title of the world’s tallest free-standing tower, a slender shaft of white-painted steel that dominates the Japanese capital’s eastern skyline. The structure’s primary task is to transmit television and radio signals but city officials hope that when it opens to the public on May 22 it will also become a major visitor destination and an engine for the local economy.
On a warm spring day last week I was allowed to ride the high-speed lift for a preview of the Skytree’s main attraction: the multiple viewing decks wrapped around its steel and concrete structure – one at around 350m off the ground and the other at 450m. The Skytree’s exact place in the record books depends on semantics: Dubai’s Burj Khalifa is 195m higher but, because it contains apartments and offices, is classified as a building rather than a tower.