JAPAN: Oriental Eiffel Tower

Rearing up over the low-lying Tokyo skyline last week was a new steel contraption that to Westerners had a familiar shape. Called the Tokyo TV Tower, it looks like Paris’ famed Eiffel Tower, and when a 250-ft. antenna is added to it this fall, it will rise 1,082 ft. above Japan’s capital and Tokyo Bay, beating the Eiffel Tower by 65 ft. Designed by Aerodynamics Expert Isamu Kamei to withstand 210-m.p.h. winds at its top and an earthquake twice as violent as the one that leveled Tokyo in 1923. the $7,000,000 tower will boast a glass-enclosed observation platform and restaurant at 400 ft. (about 30 stories high). Nestled between the tower’s four legs will be a five-story building housing TV studios.