The lobby is the surprise. Thirty floors above Otemachi, Aman opens with a stone hall the height of a temple, lit through a ceiling of paper.
Otemachi is where Tokyo does its banking. Glass towers, fast pavements, the Imperial Palace moat holding the district at one edge. Aman took the upper floors of the Otemachi Tower and built something that ignores the rhythm below.
The arrival hall runs close to thirty metres to its ceiling. Dark stone walls, a lattice of timber, and a vast lantern of washi paper overhead that turns the daylight soft. A single arrangement of branches sits at the centre. Kerry Hill drew the room, and it reads as the inside of a paper box more than a hotel lobby.
The rooms
The Deluxe Rooms start at seventy-one square metres, the largest entry-level rooms in the city. Each keeps a deep furo tub by the window and a foyer that separates the bed from the door. The glass runs floor to ceiling.
Higher up, the suites stretch past a hundred and forty square metres, and the Deluxe Palace Garden View rooms sit on the top floor with the Imperial Gardens laid out below. Tokyo fills the other windows, the skyline broken in the distance by the Skytree.
The spa
The spa takes two whole floors, an unusual amount of a Tokyo tower to give over to stillness. Onsen-style baths and steam rooms sit alongside the treatment suites, with yoga and Pilates studios kept apart from the rest.
The pool is the room people come for. Thirty metres of dark water under a stone ceiling, floor-to-ceiling windows along one side, the city dropping away at dusk. Swim toward the glass and Mount Fuji shows on a clear evening.
A tower usually sells the view. This one sells the quiet, and lets the view arrive on its own.
The Splendid EditThe tables
Arva carries Aman’s Italian kitchen up the tower, the menu the house runs from Venice to Bangkok, here with the skyline behind it. Musashi keeps a hinoki counter for omakase in the Edomae tradition, master chef Musashi working an arm’s length away.
The Café by Aman holds the daytime hours under the paper ceiling, and the lounge takes the evening. Afternoon brings a patisserie cart through the lobby, pastry served against thirty metres of open air.
The thirty-metre pool on the spa floors, the city through the glass at dusk — Courtesy of Aman
The verdict
Aman built its name in remote places, the desert and the reef and the mountain. Tokyo is the opposite assignment, a tower in the densest business district in the country. The hotel answers by turning inward, stacking calm where the city expects offices. The view is there when you want it, behind glass, on its own terms.
Aman Tokyo is open at The Otemachi Tower, 1-5-6 Otemachi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; aman.com.
Photography courtesy of Aman — Aman Tokyo