Head for the Hills in Tokyo’s new neigbhourhood | Canada Voices

Tokyo wakes up quietly. From a 19th-floor balcony at the Janu Tokyo hotel, I see the sun rise over the skyline as the metropolis gradually comes to life. A bird cawing in the distance, a few workers moving silently down the street and then the doors opening at the shops of Azabudai Hills.

I’ve arrived here at Janu, the playful new sibling of the ultraluxe, high-design Aman hotels. The “Hills” are, in fact, Tokyo’s newest neighbourhood – an eight-hectare collage of offices, shops and homes designed by American architect Pelli Clarke & Partners and the British provocateurs Heatherwick Studio.

The Janu is a supremely comfortable home base for this exploration. The hotel mixes Japanese minimalism and local hospitality with European and American influences. It is a refuge from the busy city, and yet – in a way only possible in Tokyo – deeply connected to the metropolis around it.

The hotel fills part of a 54-storey tower designed by the Pelli office; its interiors, by Belgian designer Jean-Michel Gathy of Denniston, deploy the softest of lighting and the warmest materials – washed oak, honed marble, glowing lanterns. On my arrival at the hotel lobby, I walked past four staff, who each offered a respectful bow and a big smile. The reception desk, as I saw, is not a desk but a hunk of granite with a decades-old bonsai resting on its smooth top.

Nearby the Janu Bar was already buzzing, an international crowd savouring cocktails by star mixologist Shuzo Nagumo. (Mine included chardonnay, Assam tea and “green air.”) Outside, a crowd milled through the flower gardens below. Tokyo Tower glimmered in the distance.

Where the Aman brand is known for creating refuges, Janu aims for connection. With only 122 rooms, each exquisitely decorated in a quiet Japanese-Scandinavian manner, the hotel has eight bars and restaurants. If you are here, you want to step out.

The hotel’s attitude parallels that of the complex where it sits: Azabudai Hills is massive in scale and placemaking ambition. On paper, it sounds like a typical international business hub, with Japan’s tallest building, the 330-metre JP Mori Tower; corporate offices, an international school, high-end retail, residences and the Janu.

The late developer Minoru Mori pursued a model he called “the vertical garden city.” Here in Tokyo’s prosperous Yamanote high ground, Mori’s company has built complexes that serve high-end tenants while also providing public space – especially green space, of which Tokyo has very little. Gardens of citrus trees and fairy-tale spring flowers frame the zones of shopping and work.

Three towers, like the gardens, blend Western and Japanese design. “Our idea was to shape a tall building, so it had the same geometric character that one finds in traditional Japanese aesthetics,” explained Fred Clarke, a partner at Pelli Clarke & Partners, speaking of the office tower. “It has a very gentle taper, and the tower is divided into sections, so that from a distance the tower reads like a lotus flower.” It does, adroitly so.

But in New York or London, that sort of corporate architecture would dissolve into a pablum of chain restaurants and Prada boutiques. Tokyo is different. Azabudai Hills has some of the mixing of people and activity that characterizes actual cities.

Down near the ground, an installation of stepping planter boxes by Sou Fujimoto dresses up one entrance to the shopping mall. The mall itself carries Heatherwick’s steampunk sensibility: The centre is a cluster of glass boxes, topped with lush planting, in a lattice of glass-reinforced concrete that seems to stretch and bend like rubber bands. It’s a chaotic architecture, rendered by the magic of Japanese construction into some sort of order.

The shopping mall itself is equally full of life. Commuters flow through from nearby Kamiyacho station, while tourists linger over madeleines or high tea or bento in the food hall. (Again, Heatherwickian swoops in the food hall, this time in metal.) I retreat upstairs for some quiet to Ogaki, an outpost of the famous Japanese bookstore.

After browsing the unparalleled collection of art and architecture books – a monograph on Kenzo Tange, an edition by the Canadian artist Micah Lexier – it’s time for a snack. I join a colleague at Slow Page, a three-seat café within the store. A barista pours us each a sumptuous siphon coffee, which runs $10 a cup. As we leave, I notice that the bar neighbours a kombini – one of Japan’s famous convenience stores. I pick up a delicious chicken sandwich and a drink for about $3.50. Try that at Hudson Yards in New York.

As much as Azabudai feels like a city, it does not feel like Tokyo. It’s worth heading out to experience the city’s glorious cacophony of tiny shops, eighth-floor karaoke bars and backroom revelry. One evening I head out with colleagues to the Golden Gai district of Shinjuku, where back-alley houses evolved from black-market shops into cozy bars with hyper-specific themes. We walk upstairs into La Jetée, named for the short film by Chris Marker, and fill most of its six seats. Owner Tomoyo Kawai regales us with stories of Tokyo’s film industry as we work our way through her beer stock, emerging into a joyful haze of neon and shadow.

On another night, I return to the Janu and head to its intimate Sumi restaurant. The other diners and I look on as four chefs deliver a subtle take on traditional charcoal-grilled Japanese cuisine. Sumibiyaki is usually found in low-key restaurants where you grill your own food. Here, Sumi’s chefs put on a show. The omakase begins with a dish presented in the form of a flower: pickled shallots, a morsel of sea urchin and an egg, topped with a soft cheese and slices of pickled fish-roe pouch, touched with umami from the charcoal. Things only improve when morsels of wagyu arrive from the grill, their luscious softness contrasting with the nubbly textures of a handmade ceramic dish.

After a meal this fine, there is nothing to do but relax and digest. I head for the Janu’s wellness centre for a steam bath and a dip in the plunge pool. I swim a few laps in the 25-metre swimming pool then wrap myself in a robe and head upstairs. Turndown service has left a vial of the house eau de parfum; soft light bathes the oak and limestone of my room; and soon I am settling in, ready to rise and do it all again.

If you go

Azabudai Hills includes a food hall of 34 restaurants and retailers. The Janu’s eight restaurants include Sumi, where the omakase is 22,000 yen. Rooms at the Janu start at US$944.

The writer was a guest of Mori Building Co. It did not review or approve the story.