Tokyo’s newest neighbourhood is the hottest destination in Japan
Aman has chosen to debut its cool hotel offering in this $4bn mini city with a cloud-colliding 330m tower at its centre.
Like many major metropolises, Tokyo is a city of neighbourhoods, some small and still traditional and others raging with zany entertainment outlets and tribes of teenagers. In the Japanese capital’s top districts, Harajuku is for quirk and Marunouchi for work, while Ginza remains the unassailable department store shopping hub.
And now there’s a recently unveiled large-scale contender that mixes retail, office spaces, luxury apartments, central squares and communal green plazas into an urban micro-village that appears to successfully balance a tightrope between liveability and tourism hot spot.
This newcomer is Azabudai Hills, a precinct of reflective glass buildings and jagged forms developed by Tokyo’s long-established, family-run Mori Building Co. Its 64-storey self-named centrepiece is Mori JP Tower, designed by Pelli Clarke & Partners and opened in January. It’s the city’s tallest and most talked-about building, at a cloud-colliding 330m.
And within this multi-faceted 8ha swirl are metro subway stations and subterranean flashy boutiques, pretty cafes and excellent eateries, plus florists as extraordinary as Nicolai Bergmann, where a partitioned bento box displaying flowers like edible delicacies is surely a first.
But of prime interest to lovers of swish accommodation is Janu Tokyo, heralding the well-known Aman accommodation brand’s entry into a lifestyle-led offshoot that’s no lower on luxe than its sibling Aman Tokyo but decidedly more groovy in conception and design. Covering 13 floors of a gleaming skyscraper dubbed Residence A, it’s the hottest ticket in the city.
Our family party roves amid three zones in Azabudai Hills, crossing precisely planted plazas displaying nifty QR-coded blooms and herbs. There are sculptures, installations and refillable water bottle dispensers amid these green surrounds plus, according to one gardener, “all varieties of cherry blossom known so far”. We check galleries and markets, and marvel at a map that highlights luxe brand boutiques as recognisable as Bottega Veneta and Bulgari, Cartier and Dior.
In the Japanese cuisine line-up, we count 15 sleek outlets along merging concourses. Then there are five Italian and 13 “Spanish/ethnic/Western/others” in a category that includes The Yellow Company’s ambiguous “soup curry” joint plus 17 cafes-cum-bakeries. But this is a neighbourhood of residents and office workers, not just a tourism mecca, so integrated into the mix are an international school, art museum and gallery, hospital, clinics and even a relocated temple.
It’s all so dazzling that we need to retreat to Janu Tokyo and lie down. And what a place to recline and unwind. While Aman means “peace” in Sanskrit, Janu translates to “soul”. And for lovers of boutique style, chic decor and buzzy hotel restaurants equally as popular with locals as guests, this fresh contender is just the shot. Its glassy facade is rather sci-fi and interiors flow and interconnect in a way that feels more sociable than sibling Aman Tokyo’s hushed atmosphere.
Aman’s go-to interior design collaborator Jean-Michel Gathy hasn’t forsaken Japanese aesthetic principles but he’s introduced cunning surprises within and around soaring double-height spaces, across monumental granite surfaces and glass acreage that could otherwise feel overpowering. Expect chairs covered in bright patterns, claw-footed bistro tables, extravagant lampshades and more vibrant colour than I’ve seen in all other Aman properties put together.
The restaurants, in particular, are filled with imaginative lighting, including petite versions of table lamps along bar counters plus trademark Aman references to apposite local craft, materials such as bamboo and washi fibre paper, and contemporary nods to Japanese classic motifs.
Mercato, styled like an Italian market plaza with a leafy terrace of planter boxes and jazzy-coloured seating beyond, is the biggest and buzziest eatery. Open from breakfast onwards (“croissant sandwiches” fly off the pass), it’s a voluminous space of window walls, sit-up counters and tables that leads to a garden courtyard.
Things are madly busy in the open kitchens, staff bop about in sneakers and baggy uniforms, and plates of proper pasta and local burrata with marinated black olives and tomatoes that smell like summer sunshine do the trick of teleporting diners to Italy. Seafood towers appear in two or three tiers, with generous seasonal offerings, including lobster and king crab, and junior menus are offered.
The hotel’s Hu Jing is the spot for Cantonese and Sichuan cuisine and its red and gold decor and brightly lacquered surfaces create a convivial atmosphere, with daily specials offered and weekly-changing main dishes. The dim sum treats in wicker baskets are folded as precisely as origami and topped with what looks like gold sprinkles or, as my little granddaughter insists, “fairy dust”.
At the lovely in-house patisserie, signature parfaits include white strawberry and almond, there’s New York-style cheesecake and chocolate terrine, plus bite-sized macarons that could have been airlifted from Paris were it not for local flavours of yuzu and matcha. Dinner-only Sumi feels very exclusive, with just 15 seats around a live grill, an omakase menu of finest Japanese ingredients, and views toward Azabudai.
After all that hoeing-in, time to consider 4000sq m of wellness space with one of Tokyo’s largest hotel gyms (340sq m), seven spa treatment rooms, saunas and exercise studios. The 25m indoor lap pool has watchful attendants present and there’s an adjacent heated jacuzzi-style option and cushy recliner lounges. Almost sheer blinds filter the daylight beyond, casting an almost gauzy golden glow.
Those crafty design fairies have also waved their wands across the faultless details from fifth-floor reception upwards to the eight accommodation levels. There are 122 guestrooms and suites with streamlined autumnal decor. Many face Tokyo Tower, built in 1958 and just a few metres shorter than JP Mori Tower, but seemingly dwarfed by the sheer scale of Azabudai Hills. Nonetheless its LED lights shimmer like brassy Glomesh at night. Our deluxe-category room has a balcony and huge bed with snowy-white linen and is superbly designed, although luggage storage proves an issue with three of us sharing the space.
There’s an integrated living area and pantry with Nespresso machine and complimentary pantry items. The ensuite includes a separate shower and Toto loo with a lid that obediently pops up and greets all comers, and a fabulously big tub. If in for a long soak, privacy screens can be gently pushed aside like ryokan shoji to reveal the room and view beyond.
There is hushed, well-considered comfort in these private quarters while the public spaces have a definite buzz and energy that have already positioned Janu Tokyo as the city’s most talked-about new hotel, a cheeky sibling to sophisticated Aman Tokyo and a terrific haunt for locals and visitors alike.
In the know
Janu Tokyo has rooms from 130,000 yen ($1335)
plus tax and service charges through September and October.
Just add
A personalised tour with an English-speaking licensed guide is a great way to experience some of Tokyo’s liveliest districts. We hit the jackpot with Keiko Sato, who custom designs and accompanies excursions for parties of up to six around Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama and Chiba, and welcomes children in the mix.
She leads us to Harajuku, home to the Meiji Shrine and its vast forested surrounds, and now also one of Tokyo’s trendiest shopping enclaves, especially for teenagers. For me, there’s nostalgia aplenty, although the apartment block on Omote Sando where I lived years ago has been converted to offices, and the plot where I parked my old Datsun is now, predictably, a mid-rise luxury building.
We join the crowds strolling Takeshita Dori, a pedestrian-only street dubbed “400 metres of fun, food and fashion”, with ultra-trendy boutiques, vendors selling rainbow-striped cotton candy in bouffant swirls, vintage clothing stores and gaggles of so-called “Harajuku girls” twirling parasols and kitted up in the latest and cutest fashion. We are photo-bombed by an influencer with pouty goldfish lips and alarming cheekbones, which seems about right in such kooky surrounds, and then there’s the biker in a spiked leather jacket with a samurai topknot and Hello Kitty sunglasses.
Contact Keiko by email for touring suggestions and prices: keiko.amidala@gmail.com
Susan Kurosawa was a guest of Janu Tokyo.
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