Aman Tokyo: a city-centre eyrie where bird’s-eye views offset austere interiors

Is the location some rural district with a nominal Tokyo postcode? The Aman Tokyo is indeed out of town, but above it rather than beyond. The hotel occupies several floors atop an anonymous office tower in the heart of the financial district, only a few minutes from Tokyo Station. And once you enter the express lift direct to the 33rd-floor main reception desk, all is peace, save for the plangent sound of the demurely kimonoed koto player plucking delicately away in the vast atrium of the hotel’s main space.

Yet another Tokyo tower-top hotel; haven’t we stayed there, done that? Yes and no. Rare the hotel guest who doesn’t appreciate the feeling of being hidden away yet right in the centre of town, or who doesn’t enjoy panoramic views across the cityscape to mountains that include the mighty Fuji herself.

What’s different here is that, despite the exterior’s steel-and-glass modernity, the interior has easily the most traditional of Japanese atmospheres, although the aerial lobby-atrium that’s the hotel’s focus startles the locals, too. Its vast paper-lined overhead space is like a giant lantern, and a raised pathway down its length represents an engawa – the veranda where families in traditional houses gather to enjoy views of an external garden or interior courtyard.

Here, the “garden” is the green grounds of the Imperial Palace below, and the interior “courtyard” features large-scale ikebana flower displays that change with the season. Otherwise it’s a little austere: basalt and granite and ash and castor wood.

So presumably the rooms are all sliding screen doors and shoes off at the entrance? They’re a mix of modernity and tradition. The sober passages leading to guest rooms are lightened by tokonoma – raised recesses displaying a single flower in a slender vase. Inside the room, the floors are chestnut, so the removing of shoes is optional, but interior doors do slide, and are made of paper safely backed with fire-resistant board. And there’s very solid wooden furniture, so no need to sit or sleep on the floor.