Park Hyatt Tokyo

Hotel description

No one quite does over-the-top like the Japanese. Take the Park Hyatt toilets, which have enthroned everyone from Issey Miyake to authentic royalty and, reportedly, Leonardo DiCaprio himself. The electronic seat adjusts to your bum temperature for a cozy wait, while you watch a slide show of cherry trees and listen to soothing music. Yes, your bathroom is wired like a movie theatre, complete with surround sound. But the fun is just beginning. When you’re finished, warm jets of water wash off your relevant anatomical bits, which are then, best of all, dried off by blasts of hot air, strategically placed, thrillingly ticklish, and deliciously timed.

Every time you think that something couldn’t possibly be more perfect, the Japanese will prove you wrong. This is, after all, the country that gave us the flawless three-hundred-dollar cantaloupe. So when Tokyo takes on the boutique hotel, you can bet that it’ll be spectacular. Even the Park Hyatt view is ultra-Nippon-cool, fifty-odd stories above Shinjuku, the most high tech neighborhood in town. The view from the tub is the best, with its floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall window. As you soak in what is arguably the size of most Tokyo apartments, you’re treated to a Godzilla’s eye view of the Blade Runner panorama below, with Mount Fiji hovering behind for good measure.

Of course there are the floating bamboo gardens, the bars lit with fifty dashi lanterns, the elevator that starts out dark and brightens as you go up, the black lacquer goodie basket filled with sweet bean paste cakes and rice wafers.

There’s the 22,000 square foot fitness and spa center, that provides, among other things, a foot rub that is paradise for the pressure points of your sole. All this for a hotel with less than 200 rooms. There’s also the oh-so-conscientious, oh-so-discreet staff, who will have you paged in Hamburg airport if there’s a vacant room, and find you those extra-long trousers at midnight. They’ve even taken your jet lag into consideration. Immaculately packaged aromatherapy products plus massage await the exhausted jet-setter at check in. And what is perhaps the biggest luxury in this spatially stingy city: the palatial size of the rooms.

Wallpaper likes the New York Bar best—an enormous glass pyramid 52 stories in the sky, with live jazz and beautiful Tokyo shopaholics sipping whisky and snacking on buttery Kobe beef seared steakhouse style. You’ll love the beds—the biggest in Japan and the nicest Egyptian cotton sheets. Personally, however, our favorite is the venomous Fugu fish sashimi provided by room service. As long as you survive, there’s a bonus hour of shiatsu to follow.