Japanese architecture, the first building-mounted free-fall ride

Visiting Osaka, in the Namba district (famous for food and entertainment), a very eye-catching building will certainly draw your attention. Looking like a giant hourglass with an exclamation mark in the middle, the namBa HIPS building was opened in 2007 and its unusual design tries to convey a particular concept: the hourglass means "eternal" while the exclamation mark symbolizes "surprise"...

And there is indeed a big surprise: the namBa HIPS offers the first building-mounted free-fall ride (called in Japanese Yabafo) mounted on the exterior wall of a building. This strange attraction (the red vertical rail visible in the photo) has a cabin for 6 persons and falls down from a height of 74 meters, with a speed of 22 meters per second. Too scary for me...