Tokyo Observation Decks Compared: Prices, Heights and Which to Pick

1. There is a free one, so start by asking what the others add

Tokyo has a genuinely good free observatory, which reframes every other ticket on this page. The Metropolitan Government Building in Shinjuku puts visitors on the 45th floor at 202 metres, charges nothing, takes no reservation and stays open until 22:00. Shibuya Sky, the most expensive deck in the city, is 229 metres and can cost ¥3,700.

Twenty-seven extra metres is not what the ¥3,700 is for. What the paid decks sell is a specific view, an outdoor floor, or a specific hour of the evening. Working out which of those you actually want is the whole decision.

Booking splits them in two as well. Shibuya Sky sells timed slots and Skytree prices each date separately, so both need the booking page opened first. The Metropolitan Government Building, Tokyo Tower Main Deck and Roppongi Hills you can simply walk into.

2. Height is not what separates them

Tokyo’s landmarks are scattered, so the deck you choose determines which of them appear in front of you and which one you are standing inside.

Skytree is the tallest at 350 metres and still produces flatter city photographs than some lower decks, because of where it stands. It is in Sumida, east of the centre, so the Shinjuku and Shibuya towers sit a long way off. Roppongi and Shibuya are inside the dense part of the city and the buildings read as close.

Fuji is due west and appears most often on clear winter mornings. Both the Metropolitan Government Building and Shibuya Sky look that way.

3. The free one: Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building

Two observatories sit on the 45th floor of the No. 1 building, north and south, both free and both open late.

For a night view you need the south side

The two observatories keep very different hours, which is the part people miss after reading only that they are free. These figures come from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s own visitor page.

The staggered closures are the other useful detail: one side is almost always open, and a closure falling on a public holiday moves to the next working day.

The south observatory is the only place in Tokyo where a night view costs nothing. Against the paid decks the main thing it lacks is an outdoor floor.

4. Shibuya Sky charges ¥700 more after 15:00

Shibuya Sky prices by entry time rather than by ticket type. Walk in before 15:00 on a weekday and an adult pays ¥2,700; from 15:00 the same ticket is ¥3,400. At weekends and on public holidays those figures are ¥3,000 and ¥3,700.

Those are the online rates and the counter adds roughly ¥300. Do not plan around the counter, though. Adult tickets sell online first, so when the website is sold out there is nothing at the window either.

The roof closes in bad weather

Most visitors come for SKY STAGE, the open-air floor on the roof. Rain, lightning, strong wind and high heat all close it, along with the outdoor section on the 46th floor. The ticket price does not change, so you can pay the peak rate and see only the indoor gallery.

That is the conflict with booking ahead. If the forecast is firmly wet, an indoor deck is the better use of the evening, and several of them cost a fraction of this.

No bags and no tripods on the roof

This is the part photographers miss. Anything dropped from the roof lands on a street 229 metres below, so what you may carry up is tightly limited.

Lockers are provided on the 46th floor. They take a ¥100 coin that is returned, and each compartment is 320mm high by 375mm wide by 430mm deep, so a large suitcase will not fit and should be left at your hotel or a station.

5. Skytree now has a different price every day

From entry on 1 April 2026, Tokyo Skytree moved to dynamic pricing. The old split between weekday and holiday, and between advance and same-day tickets, has been scrapped. Each date now carries its own price.

The spread is a factor of two. The same deck can be ¥1,800 one day and ¥3,600 another, so a day of flexibility in the itinerary is worth ¥1,800 here. Moving the date back and forth on the booking screen shows the difference immediately.

The combination ticket up to the 450 metre Galleria tops out at ¥4,800. It is the highest point in Tokyo, but as noted above Skytree sits away from the centre, so the Shinjuku and Shibuya towers read as distant. Go for the altitude itself; go elsewhere for the dense city photograph.

The 450m ticket is sold on site only

Skytree sells three things: the Tembo Deck at 350m on its own, a combination ticket covering 350m and 450m, and the Tembo Galleria at 450m on its own. That last one is not sold online. You buy it at the tower.

The reason is the route. You cannot reach 450m without first being at 350m, so the standalone Galleria ticket exists for people who are already up there and decide to go higher.

Which splits the planning two ways. If you know you want 450m, buy the combination online. If you would rather see 350m first and decide from there, buy the Tembo Deck online and settle it upstairs. The second route costs no more in total, and on a flat grey afternoon you can simply stop at 350m.

Either way the price attaches to the date, so the same decision made for a Tuesday and a Saturday produces different numbers. The booking calendar is the only place that shows them.

6. Tokyo Tower is not a height purchase

The Main Deck is 150 metres for ¥1,500; the Top Deck Tour adds the 250 metre level for ¥3,300 online. It is lower than everything else here and priced in the middle, so on height alone it loses. Tokyo Tower is a destination in its own right, though, which is a different reason to go.

Closing at 23:00 makes it the latest observatory in Tokyo, which matters on an evening that runs long.

The same ticket buys the stairs

An open-air staircase of about 600 steps runs from the base up to the Main Deck, and the Main Deck ticket covers it. Using it costs nothing extra.

The steps are outdoors, so rain and strong wind stop them, as does a heat-stroke alert. There is a stretch of high summer when the climb does not run at all, so plan on the lift if Tokyo Tower falls in those weeks.

At 150m this is the lowest of the paid decks, and it is the only one where how you get up is still a choice. That is where the price stops looking like a height purchase.

7. Roppongi Hills and Sunshine 60

Roppongi Hills Tokyo City View

The indoor gallery on the 52nd floor is ¥1,800 and the rooftop Sky Deck adds ¥500. Sky Deck is an open-air platform 270 metres above sea level, so it does what Shibuya Sky does, and ¥2,300 combined still undercuts Shibuya.

This is the deck that faces Tokyo Tower head on. The indoor gallery runs to 22:00; the roof is open 11:00 to 20:00, extended to 22:00 during summer special hours.

Sunshine 60 Tenbou Park

251 metres for ¥700 on a weekday. Measured as height per yen, nothing else in Tokyo comes close.

Open 10:30 to 21:30 with last entry at 21:00. Weekends, holidays and designated busy dates require advance booking; on weekdays you can buy at the 60th floor counter.

This is a deck you sit down in

Sunshine 60 came out of its refurbishment renamed Tenbou Park, with a hill of artificial grass and a café inside it. The shape of a visit is not standing at a window and leaving; it is sitting, or lying down, for as long as you feel like.

Put that next to ¥700 on a weekday and the character is clear. You are not buying 251 metres so much as an hour of somewhere to sit, which is why it is the easiest of these to do with children.

Roppongi’s 52nd floor takes its last admission at 21:30. If the indoor gallery is all you need, that leaves room for a deck after dinner.

8. One piece of advice that has gone stale

A lot of articles still describe the Sky Lobby on floors 33 and 34 of Azabudai Hills Mori JP Tower as a free observation deck. The general public cannot go up any more. Open access ended on 17 April 2024.

There is still a way to see the view: the café inside operates on one drink plus a ¥500 cover charge. People do turn up expecting a free deck and leave again. If free height is the goal, the Metropolitan Government Building is the answer.

The Bunkyo Civic Center lounge is shut too

The other deck routinely listed as free. It sits on the 25th floor of the Bunkyo ward office at about 105 metres, with Skytree to the east, the Shinjuku towers and Fuji to the west, and Mount Tsukuba to the north.

The reopening date is a projection rather than a commitment, so check the ward’s notice if you are planning around it. For now, treat the Metropolitan Government Building as Tokyo’s only free option.

9. Fuji is a winter morning, and not many of them

Mount Fuji is visible from Tokyo on 111 days a year. That is the Metropolitan Government’s own count, taken at 09:00 every day, for the most recent year on record. One day in three is not a figure you plan a viewpoint around casually.

Where they take the reading matters here. It is the 31st floor of the Metropolitan Government’s second building, which is to say the free tower this article started with is also the city’s official Fuji observation post.

Leave it out of a summer trip

Two days in the whole of August. A blue sky over Tokyo does not settle it, because the cloud that hides Fuji forms around Fuji. On a summer trip there is no reason to choose a deck for this.

January and December run at two thirds of the month. In winter, a westward outlook is worth prioritising.

Early is the word

The 09:00 reading is not arbitrary. Visibility is best early and degrades as the day warms and the air takes on moisture.

Which means Fuji and a night view are hard to collect from one deck on one day. A winter morning at the Metropolitan Government Building and a different deck in the evening is the reliable version, and since the first is free, the extra trip costs nothing.

10. Arriving 30 minutes before sunset

To get daylight, sunset and the night view from a single ticket, aim to be inside 30 minutes before sunset. Sunset in Tokyo moves between roughly 16:30 and 19:00 across the year.

This is where the pricing bites. Shibuya Sky’s higher rate starts at 15:00, and sunset falls after that in every season, so the cheaper slot never includes it. In midwinter the sun is down by 16:30, which puts the ¥2,700 window nearly two hours before anything worth photographing.

Booking lead time also moves with the calendar. During cherry blossom, autumn colour and the New Year period, sunset slots go days ahead. Book as soon as the dates are fixed, and decide in advance which indoor deck you will switch to if the forecast turns.

11. What it costs with children

Ranking these by the adult price gets the answer wrong for a family. How much each one discounts a child varies far more than the headline figures do.

Put four people through that and the spread opens up. Two adults and two children at Sunshine 60 on a weekday is ¥2,400; the same four on the Tokyo Tower Top Deck is ¥10,800, more than four times as much.

There is a separate high school rate

Tokyo Tower prices high school students on their own band: ¥1,200 for the Main Deck and ¥3,100 online for the Top Deck. Whether your teenager counts as junior or senior high changes the figure, so bring the student ID.

Top Deck tickets bought at the window cost ¥200 more per person than online. For four people that is ¥800, which is reason enough to open the booking page.

Strollers and what you carry

Indoor decks take a stroller without comment; outdoor areas do not. The Shibuya Sky rooftop refuses them, and they go in the 46th floor lockers with everything else.

If what you want is somewhere a child can be for an hour, Sunshine 60 is the answer. The artificial grass means sitting rather than standing at glass, and it is also the cheapest of them.

12. Last admission decides the evening

For a night view, the number that matters is last admission, not closing time. The gap between them runs from 30 minutes to over an hour depending on where you go.

Shibuya Sky shuts its door first

It closes at 22:30 but stops admitting at 21:20, a gap of an hour and ten minutes and the widest on this list. If dinner runs long, this is the first place that becomes impossible.

Tokyo Tower goes the other way and takes people until 22:30. When an evening has slipped, it is effectively the only deck left.

Ordering an evening

Two decks in one night means taking the one with the earlier cut-off first. Shibuya Sky in the sunset slot and Tokyo Tower afterwards works without hurrying.

The reverse does not: you arrive at Shibuya to find the door closed, and because entry is a 20-minute timed slot there is nothing to negotiate at the counter.

13. Choosing one

Pick the purpose first and the shortlist collapses to one.

If you plan on two, choose decks of different character. The south observatory paired with Shibuya Sky gives you one free and one paid, one western panorama and one view from inside the dense city. Skytree paired with Tokyo Tower gives you two views from towers, and the impressions blur together.

Frequently asked questions

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