Aman Tokyo

Aman had built its name over twenty-six years on remote resorts, and in December 2014 it opened its first hotel in a city, on the top six floors of a new office tower in the Otemachi financial district of Tokyo. Aman Tokyo, designed by the Australian architect Kerry Hill, took floors 33 to 38 of the Otemachi Tower, with the Imperial Palace gardens spread out below the windows.

History

The Otemachi Tower was developed by Mitsubishi Estate on the edge of the Marunouchi business district, with a planted forest at its base and the hotel reserved for its crown. Aman's chairman at the time, Vladislav Doronin, had acquired the company earlier in 2014, and the Tokyo opening on 22 December was the first new hotel of his ownership. Kerry Hill, who had designed Amanusa and Amanemu among other resorts for the brand, died in 2018; Aman Tokyo was among his last completed large projects.

Architecture and design

The lobby on the 33rd floor is the hotel's defining room: an atrium 30 metres high, its walls clad in washi paper on a timber frame so that the whole volume glows like a lantern, with a shallow stone pool and an ikebana arrangement at its centre. Hill drew on the Japanese house for the rest: camphor-wood floors, shoji screens, deep furo tubs and a garden of raked stone outside the lobby windows. Views run west to Mount Fuji on clear days and east across the palace moat to the Tokyo Skytree.

Rooms and suites

The 84 rooms and suites begin at 71 square metres, generous for Tokyo, and each follows the same plan: a sleeping and sitting area under a high ceiling, a stone bathroom with a furo tub set against the window, and a low timber platform in place of a conventional bed base. The Aman Suite at the top of the range has a dining room and a view over the palace grounds.

Dining

Arva, the Italian restaurant, opened on the 33rd floor in 2018 and shares its name with Aman's Italian restaurants in Venice and Kyoto. Musashi by Aman is a counter of eight seats serving Edomae sushi from chef Hiroyuki Musashi. The Lounge by Aman, beside the lobby atrium, serves tea and cocktails through the day, and the Café by Aman sits at ground level in the Otemachi forest garden.

Wellness

The Aman Spa covers two floors, about 2,500 square metres, with a 30-metre indoor swimming pool under a high ceiling, hot and cold onsen-style baths, a gym and treatment rooms using Japanese techniques and ingredients. The pool, with its floor-to-ceiling glass towards the city, is one of the largest in a Tokyo hotel.

Weddings and events

The hotel has a ballroom and a set of smaller function rooms on the hotel floors, used for weddings in the Japanese and Western styles and for corporate meetings; receptions for a few dozen guests use the Lounge and the restaurants' private rooms. The lobby atrium itself is not hired out. Larger conferences are placed in the Otemachi Tower's own conference facilities below.

Location

Otemachi is the financial quarter beside Marunouchi, directly across the moat from the Imperial Palace East Gardens. Otemachi station, served by five metro lines, is connected to the tower, and Tokyo station with its shinkansen platforms is one stop or ten minutes on foot. Haneda Airport is about 30 minutes by car, Narita about an hour. As a luxury hotel in Tokyo, it is the one most directly placed for the palace, the Ginza and the shinkansen in a single walk.