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Sunday, October 22, 2017

Tokyo’sSkytreestands firm
over city
By Barry Alleyne
in Toyko, Japanbarryalleyne@nationnews.com

T

his tree won’t fall.
It may sway, but theworld’s tallest radio
communications tower has been
constructed to handle the best
and baddest any earthquakeor tsunami Mother Nature
has to offer.
The world-famous Tokyo
Skytree tower in Japan stands
634-metres above the island
nation’s capital of 20 million
people, and with it, comes thebest technology and architectural
savvy Japan has to offer.
It stands above the 600-metre
tower in Canton, China, theCN Tower in Toronto, Canada(553 metres), and even the world
famous Eiffel Tower (324 metres)
in Paris, France.
At its highest point, theoutside air temperature is achilly five degrees Celsius. Thetower was built after high-rise
construction negatively affected
the transmission of radio waves
across the city, and openedin 2012.
It remains one of the lonebuildings in the world where
persons are asked to stay inside
instead of evacuating should
there be an earthquake.
“If there is an earthquake, it
could be one of the safest placesin the world to be when thathappens,” Megumi Onuma, thechief publications officer of theTobu Corporation, which built
the structure, told a corps ofreporters from the Caribbean
and Pacific islands on Thursday.
Onuma revealed the technology
allows Skytree to reduce theeffects of a quake by almost
50 per cent.
Tobu Corporation spent
more than 1.4 billion yen(BDS$300 million) to construct
the steel behemoth in the heartof Tokyo, and it has quickly
become one of the country’s
premier tourist attractions,drawing more than four million

visitors annually.
But there is way more to seeat Tokyo Skytree than therooftops of Tokyo, the famous
Mount Fiji on the horizon,or the 36-kilometre per hourturbo elevators, which speeds
camera-bearing tourists up
to the heavens, and creating
havoc for the ears usuallyassociated to pressurizedcabins on an aircraft.
The real attraction at Skytree,
is in the belly of the beast,and hardly seen by sightseers.
Luckily for the six journalists
taken on a special “inside tour”
of the facility recently, thehigh-tech earthquake-proof
technology and architecture
was revealed.
In the event of a quake,even a large one over the
5.0 magnitude on the Richterscale, Skytree is designed to standfirm because of the special thicksteel column which runs throughthe centre of the structure up
to 400 metres, and speciallydesigned triangular beams
attached to its concrete walls
in specific areas.
Instead of shaking during thequake, those triangular beams
and centre column absorb theenergy of the force, and sway,
preventing the building fromcrumbling under its own massive,
steely weight.
Skytree is just a componentof the Tokyo Skytree Eco Town,
an impressive facility which
is made up of a number ofcommercial entities in theTokyo area.
A private company whichforms part of the Tobu grouphas come up with a wonderfulheating and cooling system,
which uses 7 000 tonnes of stored
water from two plants to provide
the town with air conditioning
and heat, serving 230 000 people
while virtually eliminatinga fossil fuel imprint.
In addition to thermal heating
and air refrigeration, the water
can also be used by the city’s
fire department to extinguishlarge blazes.

TravelThe Association for Promotion of International
Cooperation (APIC) and the Foreign PressCentre of Japan have come together once
again to give regional journalists insight into
how the country goes about mitigating theeffects of natural disasters.
Japan, a country known in recent times
for earthquakes and tsunamis, has spentTheTokyo
Skytreetowering
overJapan’s
capitalcity, with
Mount
Fiji in thebackground.
(GP)

hundreds of millions of dollars on special
technology and building methods to protect
its citizenry. This year, APIC has invited
six journalists from the Caribbean andPacific region to get a first-hand lookat those methods.
Associate Editor Barry Alleyne is there
representing THE NATION.