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The Best Hotels in Tokyo, and Who Each One Is For

Five buildings, five entirely different versions of the city — from a ryokan seventeen floors up to the jazz bar above Shinjuku.

7 min read · Updated September 2026

The Best Hotels in Tokyo, and Who Each One Is For

Tokyo is too large to stay anywhere and hope. The hotel you choose decides which city you get: the quiet imperial one, the neon one, the design one, or the one that still feels like old Japan.

These five are the ones we book. Each entry says plainly who it suits, because the wrong one here is an expensive mistake.

For the quietest nights in the city

Aman Tokyo occupies the top six floors of the Otemachi Tower, with a stone-and-washi lobby thirty metres high and rooms built around deep soaking tubs. Best for a first trip where you want calm above all.

Hoshinoya Tokyo is the other kind of calm: shoes off at the door, tatami underfoot, and a genuine hot-spring bath on the roof. Best for travellers who want Japan rather than a hotel.

For the view and the bar

Park Hyatt Tokyo sits on the top floors of the Shinjuku Park Tower — dark wood, a pool under glass, and the New York Bar on the 52nd. Ask for a Fuji-facing room on a clear winter morning.

For design, new and old

Janu Tokyo, Aman's livelier sister in Azabudai Hills, has an enormous wellness floor and eight restaurants; it is sociable where Aman is hushed.

The Okura Tokyo rebuilt its 1962 lobby lantern for lantern. Stay in the lower Heritage Wing for the quieter, more faithful rooms.

What to do from any of them

Sensō-ji before seven is the only way to see it properly, and Golden Gai is a fifteen-minute walk from the Park Hyatt's door.

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