3:10 to Tokyo - part two

Part two of WTF's 3:10 to Tokyo tour dropped us off at the base of Tokyo Tower, an impressive steel structure rivaling the Eiffel Tower. I was hoping to see Godzilla or Mothra battling it out but they must have been taking the afternoon off. We did see the Noppon Brothers though and just like Tiger and Winnie the Pooh before them, Kawaii Girl #1 was unimpressed and rather freaked out.

With the absence of WTF Husband, corralling the Kawaii Girls-sort of like trying to pen a wild stallion with a hand tied behind your back-can be tricky. Once I had geared up and got ourselves situated, my crew was gone. Um, hello, did you forget your friend with the two small children over here?

For a moment, a very long, scary moment, I was overcome with fear that I was in Japan, didn't speak enough Japanese beyond toire desu ka? and was stuck in the middle of a couple hundred people standing outside knowing what they were doing, while I didn't.

Deep breath, inhale in, hold it...hold it, exhale out, okay, grab my hands Kawaii Girls, we're going in.

If I thought outside was overwhelming, inside was in one word, ridiculous. Memories of my honeymoon came flooding back when my claustrophobia first presented itself whilst I was in the dead center of Chichen Itza's pyramid.

Despite being greeted by several lovely ladies that looked more like 1970's stewardesses than modern day tourist movers...who tried to do just that, move this tourist towards the other thousand or so tourists onto an elevator...I opted to forgo the observatory deck in favor of the "aquarium."

Note the air quotes. Nothing more than a bunch of fish tanks ala the aquatic section at PetSmart. For 1000Yen it was a waste of money for what there was to view but I found my breath again. I hadn't realized I had been holding it for the last 15 minutes. Plus the Kawaii Girls were free to roam without fear of being trampled, we sat around a cheesy indoor koi pond that reminded me of my mother (the koi not the cheese) and so in the end, yen well spent. A quick and crazy lunch afterward, we were ready to head to the observatory deck, a staggering 150 meters (492 feet) in the sky. The crowd had thinned down to just this picture. This was only half of the line leading to the elevators. It moved quickly with 3 elevators taking 50 or so people up at a time.

I'll leave you with just a few impressive shots and Tokyo Tower by the numbers...333 13 4000 3000 28000 24 176 360. No this isn't an Episode of Lost, the plane isn't going to crash and you're not going to find yourself in the psych ward.

333 meters tall, besting the Eiffel Tower by 13 meters
4000 tons heavy, 3000 tons lighter than the Eiffel Tower thanks to steel manufacturing advances and construction technology (folks, this is Japan)
28,000 liters of orange and white paint
24 transmitting broadcast waves
176 orange floodlights in the winter, white in the summer
360 degree spectacular views of Tokyo