Tokyo Big Sight

Tokyo Big Sight, officially the Tokyo International Exhibition Center, occupies a site of about 243,000 sqm at 3-11-1 Ariake in Koto-ku, on the Tokyo Bay waterfront in the Ariake Minami district of Tokyo Waterfront City. It opened on 1 April 1996 and is Japan's largest exhibition complex; its operator states plainly that the three exhibition buildings together hold the country's largest indoor exhibition area. The venue sits at the centre of Tokyo's event economy, hosting Comiket twice a year, AnimeJapan and major trade fairs, and during the Tokyo 2020 Games it served as the main press and broadcast centre after organisers moved sports events elsewhere to cut costs. The complex contains 16 exhibition halls in three buildings - East Halls 1 to 8, West Halls 1 to 4 and South Halls 1 to 4, the last opened in July 2019 - plus the Conference Tower, which houses a 1,000-seat International Conference Room, a 1,700 sqm Reception Hall and 22 meeting rooms ranging from 35 to 760 sqm. Support space includes show offices, dressing rooms, a service corner and a conference support centre. Indoor exhibition area totals 115,420 sqm, with a further 6,000 sqm on the roof and a total floor area of 316,990 sqm. Individual halls run from 3,080 sqm to 11,680 sqm (East Hall 7, the largest); East Halls 1 to 6 each measure 90 by 90 m, and movable partitions let three of them merge into a single floor of about 25,000 sqm. Ceilings reach 31 m, floor loading is 5 tonnes per sqm in the main halls, and the 600 m East Galleria carries moving walkways, restaurants and service points. Architecturally the site is defined by AXS Satow's Conference Tower, an eight-storey, 58 m structure of glass and titanium panels shaped as four inverted pyramids raised on concrete supports. Access is by the Yurikamome line to Tokyo Big Sight Station (about 3 minutes' walk) or the Rinkai Line to Kokusai-Tenjijo Station (about 7 minutes), roughly 30 minutes by rail from Tokyo Station.