Tsutenkaku

This guide to Tsutenkaku in Osaka opens with a wooden good-luck god named Billiken, dreamed up by an American artist in 1908 and installed at a fairground here in 1912, who vanished without explanation when the fairground closed in 1923. It follows the tower itself through a 1943 fire and wartime scrapping, and the Shinsekai residents who pooled their own money to rebuild it in 1956, engineered by Tachu Naito. You'll hear how long the tower's own landmark statue was missing before anyone dared replace it. Ride the elevator to the observation platform to see what people still come to rub for luck.