Tokyo Skytree - part 1

We realized this past weekend that I only have a little time left in Japan.  (Exactly two weeks from today!) So we started thinking about what I wanted to do/see before I left.  One thing we wanted to do was go up the Tokyo Skytree Tower and see the city.  It was finished in the spring of 2012 and the main observatory area is 350 meters above sea level.  Kelly and I went to the Tokyo Tower those first few days in Tokyo.  That was cool as well but it was only 150 meters above sea level.

So we set out and headed to downtown Tokyo around 11:00 on Saturday.  It takes probably a good hour to get to Tokyo station.  We stopped here and got some food and went to find the Miffy store.  Kelly really wanted to buy something miffy.  It took us close to 45 minutes to find the store because the shopping area outside the mall has two different buildings, 8 floors each, and hundreds of people! We finally found the miffy store on the character floor which consisted of dozens of shops each dedicated to some type of animated cartoon character.  It was awesome!

We then caught the train to the Skytree.  Walking up to it was insane, it just kept getting bigger!  By the time we got there it was probably about 1 o'clock.  Seth went to go get tickets while Kelly and I walked around with Marley.  He came back a few minutes later with a defeated look on his face.  He then handed me 4 paper cards with the time 19:30-20:00 written on it.  since it was a Saturday there was a huge wait to get in.  They hand out these place holders, you are to return and get in line at your designated time and then wait in line to buy the ticket and then to go up.  It said you can expect to wait between 30-60 minutes of waiting in line after your designated time.  We all looked at Marley and laughed because we knew there was no way he was going to last until 730 just to get in line since his normal bed time is 6. It was so defeating to travel all the way there and yet not be able to do it.

We ended up walking to Asakusa, the next city, and walking around in a shopping area and seeing a temple.  This at least made up for the fail of the attempt before!

This is as close as we got to going up.

These pictures are of the temple at Asakusa