Tokyo Sky Tree

Saturdays have been my night for hitting the Long Is Iced Teas for quite some time now, and for the most part it's been great to be out socialising and letting my hair down after a week's hard work.

On this occasion the guys piked on me, so I was left to my own devices tonight.

On the way to Funabashi I'm always keen to look out the train window to check the progress of the Tokyo Sky Tree.

For Tokyo, I think it's the most exciting development for quite some time, and by the look of all the people taking photos already even at this stage, I think a lot of Japanese think so too!

Ishibashi are having a 10% used sale this weekend, so finally I'm getting a kick drum pedal in Shibuya tonight as well. Seeing that it's "on the way", I decided to get off at Kinshicho.

This is what it looks like from the station platform. It took about fifteen minutes for the easy beeline walk to the tower.

As you can see from this photo, they've hit the 398m mark. To give some comparison, Tokyo Tower is 332.5m high, so it's already surpassed that height by quite a bit already.

From a distance and up close this tower looks impressive on first sight, but after a short while I was there, the proportions looked a little strange as it moves up from a triangulated shape to a circular one.

Even though Tokyo Tower clearly ripped off the Eiffel Tower, I think it's presence is more commanding that this one is. Time will tell of course. Once it reaches it's final 634m height I'm sure I'll eat my words. I just hope I'm still here to get the chance to see it's completion sometime in 2012.

I spent quite a bit of time taking WAY too many photos and getting lost trying to find the entrance to Oshiage station which is a lot closer (Narihirabashi station is a very close station too), than walking back to Kinshicho, and conveniently able to get me to Shibuya.

I didn't want to miss happy hour, so I quickly picked up my Tama Cobra kick pedal for a nice 5,382 yen, and went straight to get my two drinks before it was over. The pedal was heavier than I expected, and a bit of a burden to carry around but not as annoying as the bar staff not giving me the 5% discount using my membership card. I was preoccupied with my bags to notice and they hadn't given me the usual receipt to fight my case. I shrugged my shoulders and thought at least I saved a few bucks with happy hour anyway.

I got a seat. It had the potential to be a good night until I heard that night-crushing line.

"Are you American?"

Oh no.