Park Hyatt Tokyo
Tokyo, Japan
The Lost in Translation hotel, floating above Shinjuku in a haze of jazz and cloud.
For a whole generation of travellers this hotel is inseparable from a film. Lost in Translation turned the Park Hyatt's top floors, the cloud-level pool, the wood-lined library, the New York Bar with its wall of glass, into a mood as much as a place: jet-lagged, sleepless, quietly romantic.
What's striking is how well it has aged. Where newer Tokyo hotels shout, the Park Hyatt murmurs, in warm timber and soft light. The rooms are huge by Tokyo standards, with deep tubs and windows that frame Mount Fuji on clear winter mornings.
The Verdict
It no longer holds the title of Tokyo's most cutting-edge hotel, and it isn't trying to. What it offers is something rarer, which is atmosphere, and few hotels anywhere have more of it.
A Suntory whisky in the New York Bar as the pianist plays and Tokyo spreads out fifty-two floors below, the exact frame Sofia Coppola made famous.
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