Nagoya TV Tower

Japan's first tower built for broadcasting, finished in 1954, four years before Tokyo Tower and by the same engineer. Naito Tachu designed both, along with most of the other lattice towers in the country, which is why they look like relatives.

It stopped transmitting when analogue television ended in 2011 and spent years looking for a purpose. The answer arrived in 2020 after a full renovation: the tower now has a fifteen-room hotel inside its legs, the first hotel in the world built into a broadcast tower, and the structure was designated an Important Cultural Property in 2022. It was renamed Mirai Tower, though nobody in Nagoya calls it that.

There are two levels to go up to. The Sky Balcony at 100 metres is outdoors and open to the weather, which is the better of the two; the Sky Deck below it is enclosed. Neither is high enough to beat the observation floors of the taller buildings around it, and that is not the point. The point is that you are standing inside a piece of 1950s steel engineering with the city grid running away beneath you.

The tower stands in the middle of Hisaya-odori Park, a long strip through central Nagoya that was rebuilt in 2020 with lawns, shops and cafes along its length. Oasis 21, the glass roof with water on top, is directly beside it, and the two lit up together after dark are the standard photograph of the city.

Sakae station is underneath. Tickets are around 1,300 yen.