It’s in Tokyo’s central Yaesu neighborhood, between luxury shopping district Ginza and the Nihombashi business district, right next to Tokyo Station. The hotel takes up the top five floors of the 45-story Tokyo Midtown Yaesu tower — with 98 rooms, a two-level spa, and four outdoor terraces overlooking the city.
It’s not a helicopter pad on the roof or a closed-off dining room away from prying eyes, though the hotel does offer the latter at Il Ristorante – Niko Romito on the 40th floor. It’s an elevator at the end of your hall that goes directly down to the spa. No stop in the lobby, no need to worry about running into anyone you know or bumping elbows with a celebrity while in your slippers.
The pool is lined with cabanas you’d find at a resort in Bali, with white-linen loungers under slotted wood pergolas, which match the Burmese Teak used throughout the spa.
The real showstopper is the pool floor, made of mosaic tile and Venetian glass in a light, entrancing shade of green that Bulgari created “to mimic the light of an emerald,”
Often a massive pool in a massive city would be relegated to a subterranean spa, or a lower floor that gets much less natural light.
The hot tub (formally called the “vitality pool”), which has a curved mosaic mural of green, gray, and gold fans. These fans are all over the hotel, printed on the fabric lining the hallways and covering the doors that welcome guests to the lobby.
The bedside table — with a drawer hiding all the outlets you’d ever need.
Deeply functional amenities intermingle with expensive, beautifully creative accents in these rooms. The brushed elm wood complements the embroidered silk, cream-colored walls; saffron-and-white patterned headboard; and Japanese black granite bathtub.
The ceilings are hand-painted with five layers of gold paint, in each of the 98 rooms across seven suite categories, ranging from the entry-level Superior Rooms to the 45,000-square-foot Bulgari Suite, which starts at $30,000 a night.
There is one other fixture in this hotel that looks so perfect you would think it was a print: the backsplash at the 45th-floor Bulgari Bar. As it turns out, it’s not a print, nor is it a wallpaper, which was my guess.
The bar serves small plates, all curated by Romito and playing off Italian comfort food. The food here and at Il Ristorante seems simple and perhaps even pared-down, but that’s only because it’s very effectively packaged to mask the complexity.
There is also a gorgeous chocolate shop on site, with cakes and chocolates that walk a fine line between art and food. Embellished with logos, intricate designs, and, in the case of one particularly fetching gâteau, candied hazelnuts, they are all too pretty to eat. And near the chocolate shop, past a selection of jewels from Bulgari’s archive Heritage Collection, is Sushi Hōseki, the brand’s first sushi restaurant.
