Fukuoka Tower

This guide to Fukuoka Tower follows the tower's odd double life as a movie monster's target, starting with suit actor Kenpachiro Satsuma sweating inside a Godzilla costume on a Toho soundstage in 1994, shoving over a scale model of the very structure rising above you. It goes back three years earlier to a three-headed dragon blowing out its observation deck windows in another film, and traces the real building's 1989 completion for Fukuoka's centennial fair. Satsuma, the guide notes, spent decades working in suits so heavy that crews drained sweat from the boots between takes.