Janu Tokyo

Tokyo Tower rises a few hundred metres south-east of Azabudai Hills, and from many of the windows of Janu Tokyo its red-and-white lattice fills the frame. The hotel opened on 1 March 2024 inside the new Mori Building district between Toranomon and Roppongi, as the first property of Janu, the brand the Aman group created as a more social sister to its own retreats.

History

Aman came to the city in 2014 with Aman Tokyo, on the top floors of the Otemachi Tower near the Imperial Palace. A decade later the group returned with a different proposition. Janu, a name taken from the Sanskrit word for soul, keeps Aman's standards of space and service but adds more restaurants and bars, livelier public rooms and a larger place for fitness and social life. Tokyo was chosen to launch it, with further Janu hotels planned in other countries.

The site itself took a long time to assemble. Mori Building, the developer behind Ark Hills and Roppongi Hills, spent more than three decades gathering the plots of a hilly district of small houses and lanes before construction could begin. Azabudai Hills opened in November 2023. Its centrepiece, Mori JP Tower, rose to about 325 metres and became the tallest building in Japan on completion, and Aman Residences Tokyo occupy its upper floors. A few weeks before the hotel opened, the digital art museum teamLab Borderless reopened in Azabudai Hills after leaving its first home in Odaiba.

Architecture and design

Pelli Clarke & Partners designed the district's towers, and Heatherwick Studio shaped the low-rise buildings around the central green, with their rippling planted roofs. Jean-Michel Gathy of the studio Denniston, whose work for the group includes Aman New York, designed Janu Tokyo. Where Aman Tokyo, by the late Kerry Hill, is a study in stillness high above Otemachi, Janu sits close to the ground among gardens, shops and restaurants, and its public rooms are meant to be busy.

Rooms and suites

There are 122 rooms and suites. Many look towards Tokyo Tower. Others face the gardens of Azabudai Hills or the towers of Toranomon to the north. Rooms are spacious by the standards of the city, with large windows that make the most of the views, and the suites add separate living rooms for guests staying longer.

Wellness

Wellness takes a large share of the building. The spa and fitness facilities cover about 4,000 square metres, among the largest of any hotel in Tokyo, with an indoor swimming pool, treatment rooms and a gym with studios for classes. For a city hotel, the scale is closer to a resort spa than to the single floor that most Tokyo towers give over to fitness, and it reflects the brand's idea that exercise and company belong together.

Location

Kamiyacho Station on the Hibiya line connects to Azabudai Hills underground, and Roppongi-itchome on the Namboku line is close by. Toranomon Hills and The Okura Tokyo are a few streets to the north, and the restaurants of Azabu-Juban lie down the hill to the south. Tokyo Tower is a short walk away, and beyond it stands Zojoji, the temple where six of the Tokugawa shoguns are buried. Haneda Airport is roughly half an hour by car, and Tokyo Station about fifteen minutes by taxi. This is a luxury hotel in Tokyo set at the centre of a district that opened only in 2023, and much of the life of the neighbourhood now passes its doors.