Tokyo Tower

Its formal name is the Japan Radio Tower, and the structure went up in a hurry between June 1957 and its opening on 23 December 1958. Tachu Naito designed it after the Eiffel Tower, with the engineering firm Nikken Sekkei, and claimed it would survive an earthquake twice the intensity of the 1923 Great Kanto shock or a typhoon gusting to 220 km/h. At least four hundred labourers worked on it each day, many of them tobi, the traditional high-steel crews.

About a third of the steel was scrap from American tanks damaged in the Korean War. When the 90-metre antenna was bolted on in October 1958, it took the title of tallest freestanding tower in the world off the Eiffel Tower by nine metres, and it did so weighing about 4,000 tonnes, some 3,300 tonnes less than the Paris tower, because it is thinner and simpler.

That is also why the comparison people make on arrival is the wrong one. The Eiffel Tower is a heavier, older, more decorated object; this is a light steel lattice built for radio and painted white and international orange because aviation law of the day required it. The paint is the detail that surprises visitors: the whole structure takes about 28,000 litres to cover, the repaint traditionally ran on a five-year cycle, and the 2019 coat used a longer-lasting formula that pushed the next one out to 2026.

Why it is famous, and why it stopped being useful

For half a century it was the mast that put Japanese television into Tokyo living rooms, and it became the shorthand for the city in the same way the Eiffel Tower is shorthand for Paris: Godzilla knocks it over, Sailor Moon stands under it, Death Note frames a scene against it. Then digital broadcasting arrived. The tower is not tall enough to push the higher frequencies past the high-rise blocks that grew up around it, an extension was costed at roughly four billion yen and never built, and the broadcasters moved to the 634-metre tower in Sumida in 2012.

Two FM radio stations still transmit from here. Everything else about the tower's income is now antenna leasing and the lifts.

The lighting is the reason people photograph it at night

Until 1987 the only lights on the frame were bulbs strung along its corners. Ticket sales had fallen badly by then, and the operator brought in the lighting designer Motoko Ishii, whose 1989 scheme replaced the bulbs with 176 floodlights inside and around the steel. From dusk until midnight the tower is lit, and the colour changes with the calendar: sodium lamps give it a warm orange from 2 October to 6 July, metal halide lamps a cool white from 7 July to 1 October.

The tower states that this light-up now runs entirely on its own solar generation.

The Main Deck is two floors at 150 metres and it is the deck the tower is designed around. The lower floor holds the Skywalk Window, a glass panel you stand on and look straight down through, along with Café La Tour and the Club333 stage. The upper floor holds the official shop, a Tokyo Tower-shaped post box, a Shinto shrine built into the deck, accessible toilets and the gate for the lift up. Nothing on this level is timed, which is why a walk-up at 21:00 works as well as a booking.

The Top Deck Tour is a different product. It is a guided departure every fifteen minutes to the 250-metre deck, sold for a named time, and it includes a drink and the mirrored interior the 2018 renovation gave the level. It also includes the Main Deck, so the comparison is not one deck against the other but one deck against both. Above that sits the Tokyo Diamond Tour, seven departures a day on the hour from 12:00 to 18:00, capped at seventy people a day, which adds a lounge.

Which one we would buy

The Main Deck, on most trips. Two thirds of what people come for is the city laid out at a height where you can still read the streets, and 150 metres does that better than 250 does. Buy the Top Deck Tour when the sky is clear enough to see far, when the fifteen-minute departure suits your evening, or when you want the 2018 interior rather than the view alone.

The one hard rule: the Top Deck closes in poor weather, so a booked departure on a wet day is a fare you may not use, and the tower prints the day's status on the operations banner at the top of its own site before you leave the hotel.

The variable is not the view, it is the lift queue. One set of lifts runs from the first floor of Foot Town to the Main Deck, and a second set runs from the Main Deck's upper floor to the Top Deck. Every visitor uses the first pair, so the wait at the base is what decides your hour, and it is worst in the two hours after sunset.

Add thirty minutes to any of these if you go up between 17:00 and 20:00. That is the window in which the last of the daylight, the sunset and the light-up all fall, and it is the only time the tower feels crowded in a way that changes the visit.

The entrance is on the roof of Foot Town and the exit is on the first floor of the Main Deck, where the tower lists the Open-air Outdoor Stairs Walk among the deck's own attractions. The tower's site says about 600 steps are open; the Wikipedia article on the structure puts the stairwell at roughly 660 and records that on weekends and holidays visitors may use it in place of the lifts for the same fare, earning a certificate for the climb. We could not find a weekday rule stated in English on the tower's own pages, so treat the certificate and the weekend limit as reported rather than official, and check the operations banner on the day.

What is stated plainly is when the stairs shut. The banner at the top of every page on the tower's own site carries an Open-air Stair line, and on the morning we read it that line said the stairs to the Main Deck were closed due to bad weather. They are outdoors, uncovered, and the tower closes them whenever the weather turns.

Is it worth doing

Yes, if you are steady on stairs and the day is dry. The climb takes most people fifteen to twenty minutes, the fare is the same as the lift, and the view opens gradually through the steel rather than arriving at once through a window. It is not a shortcut: on a busy evening the lift queue may still be shorter than the climb.

And there is no stair option for the Top Deck, which is lift-only.

The Main Deck runs 09:00 to 23:00 with last admission at 22:30; the tower warns that last admission may be brought forward when the base is congested. The Top Deck Tour runs 09:00 to 22:45 with the last departure at 22:15. The Tokyo Diamond Tour departs at 12:00, 13:00, 14:00, 15:00, 16:00, 17:00 and 18:00.

The light-up runs from 19:00 to midnight.

• Before 11:00 is the quietest stretch of the day, and the one time the Skywalk Window is free enough to stand on for more than a moment.
• 17:00 to 20:00 is the busiest, because sunset and the light-up fall inside it. If that is when you want to be up there, buy the Top Deck departure ahead rather than joining two queues.
• After 21:00 the base empties again and the deck is close to quiet, with the city fully lit. This is our pick for a first evening.
• No weekly closing day is published. That is the point of putting the tower on a Monday, when the state and metropolitan museums close.

When it does close

Weather. The Top Deck is suspended in poor conditions or for operational reasons, and the open-air stairs close in bad weather. Both are printed on the operations banner at the top of the tower's own site, updated for the day, and that banner is the only source we would trust the morning of a visit.

The view from here contains the Skytree. The view from the Skytree contains this. Which of those two skylines you want in your photographs is the whole argument, and it is why plenty of people who have been up the taller one come here anyway: the orange lattice is the object the city puts on its own posters, and you cannot see it from inside it.

Second, the money. An adult pays $9.72 (¥1,500) for the 150-metre deck here. That is the cheapest paid deck of the three big ones, and the free municipal observatory in Shinjuku is the only view in the city that undercuts it, at nothing.

Third, the neighbourhood. This tower stands in a temple precinct. Zojoji, the Tokugawa family temple, is four minutes downhill; its 1622 main gate is one of the oldest wooden structures in the city; six shoguns are buried behind it. Shiba Park wraps around both. The taller tower stands in a shopping complex. If you want an afternoon rather than a lift ride, this is the side of the river that has one, and the three-day itinerary routes it that way.

- Buying the Top Deck Tour online is the only saving the tower offers. The web fare is $21.40 (¥3,300) against $22.70 (¥3,500) at the counter, while the Main Deck costs the same either way [tower fee page, read in Q3 2026]. - About a third of the steel came from American tanks damaged in the Korean War, bought as scrap during the 1957 construction [Wikipedia, Tokyo Tower]. - The tower colour changes twice a year, and the reason is temperature, not fashion. Sodium lamps light it orange from 2 October to 6 July because orange reads as warm in winter; metal halide lamps light it white from 7 July to 1 October because white reads as cool in summer [Wikipedia, Tokyo Tower, citing the Ishii lighting scheme]. - There is a Shinto shrine on the upper floor of the Main Deck, the Tower Daijingu, and it issues a red seal stamp to visitors who ask [tower Main Deck floor guide]. - Present a JCB card issued outside Japan at the ticket counter or the official shop and you get a discount, which is stated on the fee page and nowhere on the resale platforms [tower fee page, read in Q3 2026].

There is no station called Tokyo Tower. The closest is Akabanebashi on the Toei Oedo Line, five minutes from the Akabanebashi gate, and it is the exit to aim for if you are arriving with luggage or in the rain.

The free bus, and the one that costs money

A free hydrogen shuttle circulates between Tokyo Station's Marunouchi exit, Waters Takeshiba, Hinode Pier, Takanawa Gateway and the tower, taking about an hour end to end from Tokyo Station. The Tokyu Bus route East 98 covers the same first leg in about twenty minutes from Tokyo Station's Marunouchi South Exit, plus a two-minute walk. Which you want depends entirely on whether you have the hour.

The rest of the network is explained on the getting around page.

Arriving by car or on two wheels

The car park sits under the tower, open 09:00 to 23:00 with last entry at 22:30, at ¥800 for the first hour and ¥400 for every half hour after it. Bicycle parking on the south side is free for two hours, then ¥150 per four hours; motorbikes are ¥400 per four hours. Both are stated on the tower's Access page.

Photography is asked to stop on the underground car park stairs.

Build the afternoon around Zojoji and Shiba Park while the light is still good, take an early dinner in Ginza or Daimon, and come back for the deck after 21:00 when the base has emptied and the light-up has been running for two hours. That order costs nothing extra and turns a twenty-minute lift ride into a half-day.

On a Monday it becomes the anchor of the day rather than the end of it, because so much else is shut. Pair it with the temples and shrines, which keep their own calendar, and leave the museums for a day when they are open. If you are fitting the tower into a fixed number of nights, the two-day and three-day itineraries both place it on the evening it works best.