Osaka from the Umeda Sky Building - Osaka, Japan
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denben
N 34° 42.313 E 135° 29.438
53S E 544931 N 3840463
The Umeda Sky Building is a spectacular high rise building in the Kita district of Osaka, near Osaka and Umeda Stations. It is also known as the "New Umeda City".
Waymark Code: WMZBY8
Location: Osaka, Japan
Date Posted: 10/16/2018
Views: 2
The 173 m (568 ft) Umeda Sky Building was designed by Hiroshi Hara. It was constructed by Takenaka Corporation and was completed in 1993.
The building features a rooftop observatory, the Floating Garden Observatory. In the basement, there is a restaurant floor that replicates a town of the early Showa Period, while offices occupy most other floors. At the foot of the towers is an urban garden with walking trails and water features.
The observatory offers great views of the city through its windows and open-air deck. To get to the observatory, visitors take a glass elevator from the 3rd to the 35th floor, before taking a spectacular glass covered escalator (the highest in the world), 45 meters long and seeming to be suspended in the air.
Osaka is Japan's second largest metropolitan area after Tokyo. It has been the economic powerhouse of the Kansai Region for many centuries. Osaka was formerly known as Naniwa. Before the Nara Period, when the capital used to be moved with the reign of each new emperor, Naniwa was once Japan's capital city, the first one ever known.
In the 16th century, Toyotomi Hideyoshi chose Osaka as the location for his castle, and the city may have become Japan's political capital if Tokugawa Ieyasu had not terminated the Toyotomi lineage after Hideyoshi's death and moved his government to distant Edo (Tokyo).
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