Rooftops and Sunsets in Tokyo

We arrived in Tokyo during a September heatwave which meant priorities shifted from seeing all the things to trying to keep from boiling over.

With most days at or over 35°C/95°F, we lingered in air-conditioned buildings, retreated into multi-story shopping malls with rooftop views, and tried to do the outdoor things after sunset.

There are many museums in Tokyo, but since our accommodation was only a few stops away from Ueno Park, we picked the National Museum of Japan which spans four buildings. It’s one of the oldest museums in Tokyo and it’s also free.

Watching the sunset over Tokyo from the Observation deck at Odaiba Seaside Park, which is the indoor option on the 8th floor. For other sunset view options on the island, there is a second-floor boardwalk and the sandy Odaiba Beach just steps beyond the doors.

After the sunset, we went around to the front of Odaiba to take in another kind of light show. This is the Unicorn Gundam which has several evening shows. While this isn’t the Gundam that fully moves, the head does transform.

The view from the Shibuya Parco shopping mall rooftop patio is on the 10th floor. There are some seats with shade and walkway that goes almost 360°.

Nestled among the fashion racks of Shibuya Parco are many other things. There is a Namco/Bandai floor and even a small art museum on the 4th floor called the Parco Museum Tokyo which houses a rotating collection. This painting is from the FriendsWithYou [Ocean - Temple of the Sacred Heart] collection by Samuel Albert Borkson & Arturo Sandoval III.

The sunset roof of Nakano Broadway. Home to a very vintage anime shopping experience. And also, really expensive watches.

A more recent addition to the Shinjuku skyline is the Tokyu Kabukicho Tower. A 48-storey skyscraper completed in 2023.

Inside the Tokyu Kabukicho Tower, we blitzed through the Joyopolis arcade, the movie theatres, restaurants, and some other floors up to the 17th floor where there was a small glass observation deck.

There are quite a few rooftops from which to see the grand old brick facade of Tokyo Station, but the Kitte Marunouchi shopping mall also offers a glimpse behind to watch the trains.

We went for the rooftop view, but we stayed for…the museum?! The Kitte Marunouchi shopping mall also holds a beautiful small but impressive free museum called Intermediatheque which feels like walking into a multi-floor cabinet of curiosities. It holds unusual things such as a giraffe skeleton, enormous dried leaves of plants from the Amazon, and a collection of gramophones.

The Isetan department store is an old landmark in Tokyo going back to 1886. It originally sold kimonos, and still does on the 7th floor, but now it also holds high-end brands which were way out of our price range. But that was okay since we were after something much more worthwhile.

Isetan’s rooftop garden is a gorgeous oasis in the middle of Shinjuku. It is a little hard to find though. Most elevators only go up to the 7th floor and then you have to find the staircase in the corner where the kimonos are sold to go up to the final floor (we were never lucky enough to find the right elevator bank going up). But it was worth the search to escape the pavement heat, catch a cool breeze, and lie on some very well-manicured grass.

Some streets in Shinjuku close to traffic on the weekend which, when we finally crept out at dusk, made for some stunning pics.

Lights, cameras, cats!! Well, just this one specifically on this 3D billboard that sits right outside the East exit of Shinjuku station. There is a much smaller 3D billboard in Shibyu which houses a panda which is cute, but not as impressive as this one.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building is known for its free observatory which we did on our last trip. However, the exterior also does a 13,905 square meter light show that was certified by Guinness World Records as the largest permanent display of its kind in the world.