An evening trip to Funabori Tower, Tokyo

We heard about Funabori Tower from one of the friends last week. Funabori is just a two minutes by Toei Shinjuku line from Higashi Ojima. Yesterday, we went to visit Funabori tower with two friends.

Funabori tower, an integral part and main attraction of Tower hall Funabori, is also a place of conference, wedding parties, meetings, events and hotels. Calm and quiet Funabori station is just less than a minute walk from the tower hall Funabori.

Funabori Tower got its name from the place name Funabori. Funabori is near to Higashi Ojima and Ichinoe in Toei Shinjuku line. Funabori tower is approximately 7 minutes from Yawata/Motoyawata when we come from Narita Airport in Keisei line. A 7 minute walk from Keisei Yawata is required to reach Motoyawata in Toei Shinjuku line. It is recommendable to burn the extra fat accumulated! Japanese people are health conscious to the extent that they purposely make some of the destinations reachable by walking only!

It was around 6:30 PM when we started from Higashi Ojima with kids. Kids like to play outside and such journeys are ideal occasion to impart knowledge on them by talking about what the elders know about the place and history. Unfortunately I was not much informed on the importance of Tower hall Funabori.

Funabori tower is named after the tall tower, which is 115 meters tall and location, Funabori. At the entrance place there were wooden sculptures of musicians with violin in their hands. When we entered the Tower hall building, the first thing I noticed is a Japanese girl clad in black suit with a black hat coming walking to the reception area. Our friend approached the reception to ask how to access the tower. They explained how to go to the top of the tower.

We could see model statues of bride and groom on the first ground floor (First floor in Japan).Tower Hall Funabori is an ideal venue for holding events that ranges from expos to conferences to weddings. Funabori tower hall also have a bridal salon, restaurant and cinema. Funabori tower hall have a big hall, small hall, Banquette room, Event hall and Shop & Service room. Parking lot, Movie Theater, Exclusive service yard etc makes the Funabori tower hall a unique place for events.

The staff at the ground floor guided us to the elevator (Erabeta in Japanese) which took us to the seventh floor. Came out of the elevator at the seventh floor, we walked on the corridor which is long that reached to the end of the building. There another staff guided to us to one of elevator. Baby strollers are allowed to take up to this point only.

We entered to the elevator to reach the top of the Funabori tower. The digital display inside the lift showed the distance we covered in meters. When the display showed 105 meters, the lift stopped. Conveying our Arigato gozaimasu to the lift operator, we entered to the observation tower area. It is built in a square shape allowing 360 degree view of the surrounding Tokyo city and skyscrapers.

The night view of Tokyo is exciting! The extreme engineering skills manifested through the construction of attractive tall structures illuminated with electric bulbs are a feast to the eyes.

We saw Tokyo Tower from the observation tower in dim light, Sky scrapers in Odaiba was also visible. The photos taken from the top of the Funabori Tower at night were not so clear.


The view of vehicles moving not so far away on the bridge along with Arakawa river was really amazing. Another attraction was the view of trains moving on Toei Shinjuku line from the top of the tower.


We spent more than one hour at the tower top. There were no crowd and the observation area was silent, except our children made some noise when they played. Funabori Tower in the Tower hall Funabori is a recommendable place to visit in Tokyo.

Funabori tower is free to visit. To reach Funabori Tower the following link have a pdf file showing the nearby places and approximate time to reach the tower from Narita Airport and Keisei line.

How to reach Funabori Tower and Tower Hall Funabori? Click here

For those who are interested to contact the Tower hall Funabori for any kind of events, conference, the following address and website address will help. The site is in Japanese language;

Tower Hall Funabori
4-1-1 Funabori
Tokyo, Japan
phone: +81 3 5676 2211
fax: +81 3 5676 2501
Funabori Tower Hall

Again on the living expenses for a foreigner family in Tokyo

On March 22nd I wrote a simple article on living expenses for a foreigner in Tokyo. As I told in this blog and other discussion forums, cost of living in Tokyo is much higher compared to other East Asian and European nations. When I was writing that post in this blog on March, I was living alone and my family was in India. Almost three weeks after writing that post, they joined with me along with my mother.

It will be interesting to compare the cost of living in Tokyo for a bachelor and for a family, especially for foreign people. I think this will be a helpful hint for at least some of the Asians planning to come to Japan for work.

In order to tell how big the difference in expenses will be for a family in Tokyo when compared to the bachelor life, I would like to narrate the real incident. One day in May, I got a phone call from my wife saying that, one of the Japanese woman has come to our home telling something. As my wife was new to Japan, she could not understand even a single word, but could guess it is something related to the bill for gas.

As I also did not have confidence to speak in Japanese especially over phone, I requested help from one of my Japanese colleagues. My Japanese colleague after talking over phone explained to me that the Gas bill has suddenly shoot up to 13340 Japanese Yen (JPY) for the last month. Compared to the March month’s bill of 1600 JPY, that was more than 8 times high! The Japanese staff from the Tokyo Gas company was surprised and doubted for some leakages inside home. She wanted to enter the home and check! When I heard from my colleague, I thought of the promptness and alertness of Tokyo Gas company’s staff. It is really appreciable. They are not only for billing the customer, but also to educate and alert them of a sudden change in the billing amount.

My colleague explained that my family has joined with me from last month and that was the reason for sudden change. Taking the high cost of living in Tokyo with family, we could control the Gas bill for the subsequent months by putting restriction on the usage of gas heaters and water heating system.

The same thing happened to the Electricity bill during summer seasons, when we switch on the air conditioners almost throughout the day. Compared to the bachelor life, the bills for Gas, Electricity, Water and sewage, has more than tippled on average. Yahoo BB bill is same and there is no much change. The Softbank mobile bill has increased a little to reach something around 3600 JPY per month. Putting all the bills together, it comes around 30,000 JPY per month for Water and Sewage, Gas, Electricity, Mobile, Internet connection, Cable TV etc.

The drastic increase in expense is on the education. The school fee and the bus fee for children is the biggest contributor to the high cost of living for foreigners. The education is free in Japanese schools. The fee in international schools in Tokyo is too high for an average paid foreigner especially in Japanese companies. Japanese companies mostly have no separate rules for giving special allowance to support the education of children of foreign staff.

We are paying 60,000 JPY per month for the kid’s fee and 15,000 JPY for school bus. The miscellaneous expenses for the children relating to education may vary from 10,000 JPY depending on the schools. Since my kid is going to Indian International School in Tokyo (Morishita), she has to go by school bus.

To summarize, the living expense for one month on an average for a simple living family will be around 300,000 Japanese Yen. This expense does not include the House rent, tax and other deductions. Including the house rent, travelling expenses, the expense will be around 450,000 JPY per month if the whole amount of house rent is to be paid by us. Many Japanese companies pay 70 to 80% of the house rent to their employees. This is a great support for employees. Since the tax depends on the basic pay, I don’t want to make a comment here.

In short, living in Tokyo is not simple! There are very few chances in Tokyo to live simple and save a lot of money from our salary, compared to many other major cities. This makes Tokyo unique. One of the biggest cities in the world, where more than 12 million people reside at the heart of the city and more than 30 million people including the surrounding areas. The cash flow in Tokyo is high…….and still Japan has been the second strongest economy in the world!

Festivals are essential drivers for social life

The second day of Edogawa ward festival at Komatsugawa park had some new and exciting shows. The dancers were more professional and their movements were eye catching. There were professional drummers brought to perform at Komatsugawa stage. They took the audience to a highest level of enjoyment.

The social gathering found a new phase when the local Indian community got mixed with the Japanese people in stage performances also. Indian girls performed classical dances and the performance of Bharatanatyam, a form of classical South Indian dance by an Indian girl got wide appreciation from Japanese community. Interestingly the dance performer’s teacher is a Japanese national.

Japanese students also have shown their dance skills for the second day of the festival. The food stalls were crowded. Kimono dress stall also attracted many people.

During one of my trip back to India, I could meet Ms Nakamura from Tokyo, who teachers Indian dance to Indian and Japanese students. She is a well known dance performer in Kummi dance, which is a dance form being performed in Tamilnadu, one of the south Indian states. It was a new experience to hear from a Japanese about classical dances of India.

At the end of the stage performances, the Japanese classical dance was performed. The old woman performer showed her skills at the stage and dancers came down to the ground to join with the public. The public also joined with the dancers and they made a circle, moving slowly with a dance steps around a tree. It was a perfect example of cultural fusion point. People from different nationalities, most of them from India, joined in the traditional Japanese dance.

It was 9 O’ clock in the night and still the music was in the air compelling people to dance with the steps shown by the elder performer at the stage. People were not tired even after making several round around the tree with dancing steps. Departing seemed painful for many people.

The next day, while going to office I could see some people still sitting around the stage and park as if they did not like to go back. This is the gloomy part of any festival. The festival and celebrations will be over, but still people carry the memories with them.

The good moments they shared in the social gathering and celebration linger in the mind. That is one of the purposes of festivals. The sweet memories tempt people to organize and join for festival in the coming years too. This is what we also do, waiting for the next year’s festival. Such small hopes are the bigger motivations for life – essential drivers of social life.