The Tokyo Skytree towered above the streets where the guards stood

Tokyo Skytree soaring above the cityscape

Although I don't usually think about it, the skyscrapers in Tokyo are only around Tokyo Station, Shinjuku, and Ikebukuro, and not so much in the eastern part of the city. Therefore, when you look up at the eastern sky from Asakusa, the towering Tokyo Skytree looks a bit strange. There are no tall buildings around it, making it a solitary presence.

The east side of Tokyo is known as the "downtown" area, where many people have lived for a long time, and it may be difficult to secure a large site to build a skyscraper. In fact, the site where Tokyo Skytree was built used to be a freight station owned by Tobu Railway and the Narihirabashi plant of Sumitomo Osaka Cement, which manufactured ready-mixed concrete. It must have been difficult to secure a large site unless the factory had been closed down.

The sheer size of many of the tourist attractions that I visit during my travels often overwhelms me and makes me wonder what was there before the structures were built. For example, the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall in Taipei. Built to honor Chiang Kai-Shek, the leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party, it is a large structure, and one wonders how they managed to secure such a large site in the center of the city. The KMT government was a dictatorship, so you would think that they would have forcibly expropriated the land, but that was not the case. This was a military site during the Japanese occupation.

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