Tokyo Tower

Stumbled onto some photos of Tokyo Tower being built and thought I'd share. Love looking at photos of Japan in the past. Really tough finding decent ones though. Do let us know if you know of any libraries or stocks online.

After the NHK started to broadcast TV back in 1953, a large tower became a necessity to broadcast the analog waves over the Kanto region which lead to the construction of the 332.5 meter tall Tokyo Tower in 1958.

Tokyo Tower took only just over a year to build and is currently the tallest self-supporting steel structure in the world and the tallest artificial structure in Japan.

Today, Tokyo Tower makes its moolah from tourism and antenna leasing to the TV stations.

In 2011 however Japan is going to ditch analog TV for terrestrial digital broadcasting. The current height of Tokyo Tower is not adequate to cover the region with digital broadcasting which is why the Tokyo Sky Tree is being constructed - a tower 634 meters tall thats due to open to the public in 2012.

The Tokyo Sky Tree is obviously problematic for Tokyo Tower as all the broadcasting companies are planning to jump ship and pay for the antennas on the Sky Tree.
Because of this, the folks who run Tokyo Tower are planning on increasing the height of Tokyo Tower by 100 meters which involves increasing the actual structure height by 20 meters. Am presuming that the rest will be made up of some long extension at the top.

Tokyo Tower even has its own image girl - Umeda Ayaka.

And if you was wondering what those dolphin shaped pink objects in the video were - they is being the Tokyo Tower mascots called Noppon.

Errr, photos not in order ^^;
Update: While deciding on the Japanese title of this post, I came across more photos of Tokyo Tower under construction - photos taken from the same spot.

The rest of this photo set can be seen at Mainichi.

This photo taken in 1962.

And this is Tokyo Tower present day. Took this photo a while ago and you can see this and the photos below in the other Tokyo Tower post.

Here is a map to Tokyo Tower below. You can get there from any of the following stations:-
Akabanebashi ( 赤羽橋駅)
Kamiya-cho (神谷町駅)
Onarimon (御成門駅)
Shibakouen (芝公園駅)
Daimon(大門駅)
Hamamatsucho (浜松町駅)

Some of these photos in the Wallpaper Pool which I havent updated for ages.

History and other nitty gritty about Tokyo Tower from English and Japanese Wikipedia.