Little Blue Birdie's Diary

At the Tokyo Tower

Dear Diary,

I think you'll remember me telling you that our next destination is Japan. Well, we arrived in Japan on the morning of June 16. Straight away we went to Suzeme's house, because we were very tired. "Do you realise that we travelled almost 6,147 km?", said Robin. No wonder our flight to Japan had taken 10 days!

Suzeme's family organised a traditional 'Tea Ceremony' on our behalf, in their modern house. Their house was full of modern gadgets. I had never seen some of those gadgets before and couldn't even dream of having them. Mama Bird, Papa Bird and Robin went to take a nap, because Suzeme's father said that the best hours to visit the Tokyo Tower is from dusk to around 11 pm, when the tower is illuminated. I was very excited about the visit.

We started our journey around 4.30pm. Tokyo Tower is situated right in the middle of the town, in an area known as the Minato-Ka. According to Robin, this tower is 333m tall, even taller than the Eiffel Tower in France. This is the highest self-supporting tower in the world.

"This is the symbol of Tokyo", said Suzeme's mother proudly. The tower is painted in orange and white according to safety regulations. At night, it's illuminated (lit up), according to Suzeme's father, in orange lights in winter, and white incandescent (glowing) lights in summer, but there have been instances when the tower was illuminated in various other colours as well. For example, it had been lit in neon green for the premiere of the movie 'The Matrix'.

The Japanese government had been looking for a national symbol in the 1950s, during the post-war boom, to symbolise its ascendancy (rise) as a global economic power house. So, they had decided to build their own Eiffel Tower to symbolise the nation.

The Tokyo Tower functions mainly as a radio and television broadcasting antenna. It broadcasts 14 ranges of signals for nine TV stations and five radio stations. Now it has become one of the main tourist attractions in the country.

There was an elevator to go to the top floors. Our group, with the greatest difficulty, got into the elevator. Luckily, no one noticed it. The first floor consisted of an aquarium, which according to Suzeme, houses nearly 50,000 fish, belonging to over 800 different varieties. The third floor had a wax museum that contained the statues of world famous stars and fairy tale characters. In the same floor, there was a 'Mysterious Walking Zone', which was a 3D world, created, using the hologram technology.

There were two observatory floors as well. The main observatory floor was at the 150m level, while the other was at 250m. Seeing the magnificent view from there was really a great and moving experience.

"This tower has been the location for many films as well", said Robin. "The final battle of 'King Kong Escapes' and 'You only live twice' were filmed here" he added. The Tokyo Tower is a member of the World Federation of Great Towers. Since the weather was clear that day, I got a lovely view of Mount Fuji when I was looking from the observatory.

See you soon with details of another wonderful place in Japan.