Skytree or Shibuya Sky: Which Tokyo View to Pay For

A broadcasting mast with two paid levels

The tower in Oshiage exists to transmit television. Six Tokyo broadcasters went looking for a new transmitter in 2003 because digital signals from the older mast were being blocked by high-rises, and the design settled at 634 metres so the number would read as mu-sa-shi, the old provincial name for this part of Japan. Everything a visitor buys sits inside a structure built for something else, which is why the visit has so little slack in it: you enter on the 4th floor, ride a lift, walk two or three circular floors, and exit on the 5th into a shopping complex.

The Tembo Deck at 350 metres is three floors deep, with glass panels over five metres tall, a cafe and a glass floor panel you can stand on. The Tembo Galleria is a separate ticket: a ramp spiralling from 445 metres to a point at 450. Everything is sealed, and nothing about the visit depends on the wind.

An open roof on top of a station

Shibuya Scramble Square runs from two floors below ground to the 45th and reaches about 229.7 metres, with 213 shops and restaurants under the observation floors. The visit begins at a ticket gate on the 14th floor and divides into three zones: the lift ride, an indoor gallery on the 46th, and the open-air roof above it.

What separates it from every other paid view in the city is what sits underneath. You are standing on the station, so the crossing is directly below and the streets radiate from the foot of the building rather than lying in the middle distance. The metropolitan government's own tourism site makes the point in fewer words: the other decks look at the city, this one looks down into it. The trade is the open air, which is exactly what the operator takes away when the weather turns.

From the sealed deck in Sumida the city reads as a plan. The streets below are still legible as streets, the old low-rise east wards spread out underneath, and the Sumida river curves away towards the bay. The operator's own figure for what the tower sees on a clear day is close to 70 kilometres, which reaches Mount Fuji on the southwest horizon, and that number belongs to the upper ramp more than to the lower deck. What you do not get is any sense of the crowd: you are too high for people, and on the wrong side of the city for the neon most visitors have come to photograph.

From the rooftop in Shibuya you get the opposite. The crossing is directly below, close enough to watch a light cycle fill it and empty it. The corner the venue calls SKY EDGE puts the drop under your feet, there is a compass laid into the deck for finding landmarks, and after dark a light installation on the roof itself. So decide which photograph you are buying: the whole grid of Tokyo lit up to the horizon is the mast, and a person at a glass corner with the city dropping away behind them is the rooftop, which the sealed deck cannot produce because it has no open edge to stand on.

The rooftop venue prints the day's sunset time on its own front page, and Tokyo's tourism site suggests arriving about thirty minutes before it. That puts you on the roof for the last of the daylight, the blue half hour and the first of the lights on a single ticket, which is why the windows either side of sunset sell out before the rest of the day does, and why the fare steps up from 15:00 rather than at any other hour.

The complication is the two-week rule. Tickets go on sale at midnight Japan time exactly fourteen days before the entry date, and the venue states plainly that when the adult web tickets are gone, the counter is gone with them. The only crack is other people's cancellations. Sunset itself moves a long way across the year: in early December it falls close to 16:30 and in late June it runs to about 19:00, so the hour you are fighting for is different in each season.

The mast sells the same hour with none of the scramble

The sealed deck sells the golden hour with far less drama attached. Tickets go on sale on the first of the month two months before the visit date, and the operator holds nothing back for same-day buyers: if a slot shows as full the day before, none are released on the day. What it charges for the good hour is patience rather than money.

Slots run every thirty minutes, the entry line can still take twenty minutes at a busy hour, and the operator's own call centre will not estimate the wait in advance. It also sells two time-limited variants when its events calendar carries them: a Morning View ticket from $16.20 (¥2,500) with a soft drink and a food item, and a Night Viewing ticket from $15.55 (¥2,400) with one alcoholic drink on the deck.

The rooftop venue closes the open deck, without notice, for strong wind, rain, snow, an approaching thundercloud, photochemical smog and extreme heat. The word it uses is closure rather than delay. When that happens you can go up to the indoor gallery on the 46th floor instead, or cancel for nothing, provided you do it before you pass the ticket gate. After you go through, no refund and no discount is given whatever the weather does next. The live status of the roof is printed on the venue's own front page, and the hour before your slot is when to look at it.

The mast takes the opposite position and states it just as clearly. It will not comment on visibility in advance, it gives no refund or partial discount for rain or cloud, and it can suspend lift service in high wind at altitude. The ticket buys a lift ride, not a horizon.

When the horizon actually appears

Clear air over Tokyo is a winter phenomenon. Cold, dry days with a northwesterly behind them are when the 70-kilometre figure means anything and when Fuji shows on the southwest horizon; the metropolitan government names December to February as the stretch when the mountain can be seen on many days from its own free decks, and publishes no percentage. Summer afternoons are humid and hazy.

So in winter take a daylight slot at the mast, where the horizon is the product, and in summer take an evening slot at either, because city lights make haze irrelevant. September is the month to watch for the rooftop, and the rest of the weather year is on the best time to visit page.

Main Building No. 1 of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government splits into two towers at the 33rd floor, which is why there are two observatories rather than one. Both sit on floor 45 at 202 metres. The south deck admits from 09:30 to 21:30 and clears the room at 22:00; the north admits from 09:30 to 17:00 and clears at 17:30, except on days the south is closed, when the north stays open to 22:00 in its place.

Admission is free, no ticket is issued, and nothing can be reserved. The city is candid about the cost of that: its own page states that visitors are lining up 20 to 30 minutes to get in, and publishes a live wait reading, blue for nought to five minutes, yellow for five to thirty and red for over thirty. The closing days are the other trap, the south deck shutting on the first and third Tuesday of each month and the north on the second and fourth Monday.

What the free room cannot do

It is one circular floor of windows, and the windows do not open. There is no open-air section, no glass floor, no ramp climbing higher, and tripods are not permitted. Fuji lies due west, which makes the north deck on a cold bright afternoon the best free version of that view, since it closes at 17:30 and the light is on the right side of the sky by then anyway.

So the honest ranking is this. Wind on your face and the crossing underneath is the rooftop, and it costs money. The height that turns buildings into a model is the mast, and it costs less. A very good window at 202 metres for nothing is the government building, one of the better entries on the free things to do list.

There is no combined ticket and the two buildings sit on opposite sides of the city, so doing both is a two-day proposition. Put the mast in a morning and the rooftop at sunset on a different day: that order uses the clearest air for the horizon view and the best light for the close one, and keeps two timed bookings out of the same half day. A 10:00 weekday slot at the mast also has a short lift queue and an exit onto the river walk to Senso-ji.

Where each sits in a fixed number of nights is worked out on the three-day itinerary.