All 94,000 m² are repainted by hand: a year of brushwork, every seven years.
At 333 metres tall, it was completed in 1958 to broadcast television signals across the whole of Kanto. A team of painters repaints it by hand, one brush at a time, in a cycle that lasts a year and repeats every seven. The colour, International Orange alternating with white, is not aesthetic but mandatory: aviation law requires it for structures of this height.
Red and white, inspired by the Eiffel Tower, it is the symbol of Tokyo even before it is a background: it appears in countless anime with no link to a specific scene.
ℹ️ The Main Deck (150 m) costs 1,500 yen, with last entry at 22:30; the Top Deck Tour (150+250 m) comes to 3,300 yen online (3,500 at the ticket office, the only one of the three that costs less on the website), but closes earlier, at 22:15. The Tokyo Diamond Tour adds a private lounge for 7,000 yen, with departures at fixed times, one every hour from 12:00 to 18:00.
🚉 Kamiyacho · 8 min walk
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The tower is the stage for the fight between Sakamoto, Heisuke and Apart: they climb it, fight on top of it and fall from it. It is one of only three real places that the AniTabi database records for the series, along with Yokohama's Chinatown and the science museum in Nagoya.
Sword Art Online
It opens ‘Ordinal Scale’: the television report introducing the Augma frames it from below, then moves down to the players at its foot fighting monsters overlaid in augmented reality.
Sources: anitabi.jp · wazaanime.com · tabimaniajapan.com · tianlang.s601.xrea.com · renote.net · furaba-animeseichi.blog.jp · tokyotower.co.jp · online.bunka.go.jp · tokyotower.co.jp
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