A TRIP TO TRENDIEST TOKYO

By Laetitia Missir de Lusignan

The third largest city in the world, Tokyo is also the most expensive! Elegant, refined, inventive, energetic and luxurious ‘the capital of Asia’ has to be savoured, district by district, with careful planning & good addresses. This is a small guide to the essentials and trendy ‘musts’ for the visiting businessman or woman.

Departing to Tokyo means opening your eyes wide on a completely different world…Luxury, elegance & ultra refinement are the key words to describe this mega-metropolis which is the most seductive and populated in the Far East (more than 30 million inhabitants including Yokohama)

Design, architecture, cuisine, fashion….the city is bursting with energy, ‘art de vivre’ and an amazing variety of urban landscapes. Daring projects multiply in a show of incessant creativity, which plunges the curious visitor into its almost vertiginous frenzy. And everything is a grandiose spectacle for those who appreciate refinement in its purest form, the beauty of movement, the quest for the aesthetic, plays on light & shadow and the ever-present sense of detail. But to absorb it all and retain what is most fascinating, you have to visit the heart of Tokyo’s fashionable & teeming villages (and Tokyo has hundreds) about which everyone is talking!

ELEGANT GINZA  
To take the pulse of Tokyo, you have to start off in the small temple of luxury which is formed by the streets which are just off the main Ginza thoroughfare (very close to the Imperial Place) – the famous Chuo-dori. All the great names in fashion are present, and strolling here on a Sunday, when its reserved for pedestrians, is the best way to discover the fashion world which fascinates these adorable Japanese women with their studied walks, who are glued to their keitai (mobile phones), and completely mad about shopping.

In the rough and tumble of the busy streets, it’s a pleasure to keep coming across new buildings and boutiques, each one more spectacular than the last! There’s Dior & Chanel (with a facade in the form of a transparent screen with changing colours) where Alain Ducasse has recently installed himself on the 10th floor (www.beige-tokyo.com). On the menu – Hokkaido deer, Kyushu beef, amadai (sea-bream) on a bed of spinach.

There’s Tiffany, Hermès (www.takenaka.co.jp or www.rpbw.com) (designed like a cathedral of glass & silver stretching up into the sky) or Vuitton (www.vuitton.com), the largest of their boutiques in Japan, spread over various floors, and where the displays make a work of art out of each fashion accessory. The atmosphere is unique and the spectacle permanent! For lovers of architecture, don’t miss the red Shiseido Building (www.shiseido.co.jp), created by Ricardo Bofill (www.bofill.com) like an exclamation mark!  The facade is a clever compromise between the modern & the traditional. while inside you admire an old-fashioned staircase which leads to the small recently opened centre of contemporary art (www.shiseido.co.jp/gallery/).

And if you lose yourself in the nearby streets, you stumble across bakeries & pastry-shops, art galleries and more boutiques. Walking along nonchalantly here is pure magic: Y’s for men by Yohji Yamamoto, Ito-ya (2-7-15 Ginza) for their sublime Japanese paper (washi) and other very refined accessories (inks, incense, pens). But above all, don’t forget to spend a few hours in Mitsukoshi (a Galeries Lafayette-style department store) – it’s simply bewildering every day of the week and at every hour (and you dream of green teas and a thousand gastronomic delights in the basement).

It’s also in Ginza where you will find the largest fish market in the world (Tsukiji market) where 2300 tons of different types of fish are sold every day in an electric atmosphere (www.tsukiji-market.or.jp). To be visited without fail, from 06.00, after a light sushi & miso soup breakfast. And before strolling nearby among the Japanese ceramic displays & shops, where the prices are reasonable. Also in the area is a chic restaurant, Daidaiya (8-5 Saki) arranged like a counter illuminated through a glass facade with traditional wallpaper in warm colours. EN (3-7-3 on ‘Marronnier dori’) is recommended for its noodles and taste of grilled tuna with garlic – to be eaten seated cross-legged on mats and without shoes.  Hajime (www.ginza.hajime.com) is an astonishing place with contrasting rectangles of light which illuminate the bar area and where an aperitif is a whole new experience.

If you have the time and you start to feel hungry, you can ‘climb’ to the 35th floor of the Marunouchi Building. There you will find ‘Sens et Saveurs’ (Tel: 52202701), a restaurant with a unique view over the Imperial Palace. They have a business menu and the imaginative cuisine is Franco-Japanese, thanks to the Pourcel Brothers.

THE DIZZY HEIGHTS OF THE ROPPONGI HILLS
A little further west is the area where the m² is the most expensive in the world (www.roppongihills.com), inhabited by Tokyo’s millionaires and golden yuppies who mix in the expat world and with the cosmopolitan young (rendezvous at the Grand Hyatt www.grandhyatttokyo.com for a last glass of champagne?) who have the top jobs in Japan’s biggest companies.

Built in 2003 by the brilliant property developer Minoru Mori, it’s a concentration of 130 boutiques (a more intimate Vuitton, an entertaining Yamamoto) and more than 80 restaurants, coiled into a complex of beautiful and daring architectural forms. Asahi TV has recently decided to install their Headquarters here. At the entrance a giant metal chandelier designed by Louise Bourgeois reigns over the esplanade which plunges down towards the famous Tokyo Tower (www.tokyotower.co.jp) and is lit up at night. Scattered all around are works by well-known European artists. In the middle, impressive and throne-like is this 54 floor tower (flanked by a cylindrical tunnel), which houses prestigious financial houses and, above all, the Mori Museum of Contemporary Art (www.gluckmanmayner.com). The most recent major exhibition here (www.mori.art.museum) was a retrospective of the work of Hiroshi Sugimoto, the artist whose remarkable poetic work touches the frontiers between photography and cinema. And what is really magical is the 360º view (www.tokyocityview.com) from the bar-restaurant or the observatory at sunset.

TRENDIEST OMOTE-SANDO
A few metro stops away (use the metro as much as possible – it’s really worth it) and here we are on Tokyo’s Champs-Elysées, which is in perpetual metamorphosis and is the ultimate sacred refuge for out-and-out fashion victims. It is here that fashion is made and unmade at high speed. It’s also here where you come to stroll on Sundays in the middle of the crowds to acquire the latest fashion accessories at Anna Sui (www.mammina.co.jp), colourful and eccentric in style and which make the front cover of Vogue or Elle Japan

Minami Aoyama has all the attraction of a village with its small avant-garde shops which remind you of theatre decor. And then all the great names of Japanese design are concentrated here with original creations which amuse the experienced eye: Masamichi Katayama and his psychedelic Bape (www.bapy.co.jp), Herzog & De Meuron, behind the latest Prada, (5-2-6 Minami-Aoyama) evoking a honeycombed beehive in blown glass, Issey Miyake (www.curiosity.co.jp), Takao Kawasaki for the boutique ‘Comme des Garçons’ with its light blue glass facade, sloping walls and rounded forms.

A little further on up Omote-Sando Avenue towards Yogogi Park (don’t miss the Meiji Shinto Sanctuary www.meijijingu.or.jp dating from 1920) and towards Tasheki dori, you’ll find Harajuku (Sunday is manga day) which reveals other equally surprising curiosities. There’s the new 3-storey club set up by Tom Dixon (www.tokyohipstersclub.com), the superb Art Deco shop created by Tadao Ando (www.hhstyle.com) and Tod’s Building (www.todsgroup.com), designed by well-known Japanese architect, Toyo Ito.

And what’s new in nearby Shibuya?  Quite simply it’s even more popular and ultra hip. Mile upon mile of karaoke bars and a charged atmosphere. Fancy a cultural adventure? Dive into the world of Koichi Watari and his contemporary art gallery (on 6 floors), and the triangular watari-um! (3-7-6 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku). Curious to follow in the footsteps of Sofia Coppola (but of course! ‘Lost in Translation’, you remember it well)? Well go to 30-8 Utagawasho, 8th floor, room 601 (the Karaoke sequence) before reserving yourself a contemporary room at the Hotel Claska (1-3-18 Chuo-Cho T: 00 81 3 3719 8121) which houses an art gallery, artists’ studios, a bookshop, and a stunning Asian restaurant where you go to see and be seen.

Traditional Asakusa
As regards the north of Tokyo, it’s Asakusa & Kappabashi-dori (street specialising in kitchen utensils) which are worth a detour. A change of atmosphere and décor, this is traditional Japan in all its splendour (temples, workshops, stalls, alleyways, sweet-shops and rice soufflé cakes or Sembei on Nakamise Dori…).  You come here to see the famous Shinto Kannon Temple, also known as Senso-Ji, and founded in 628 (a delightful atmosphere here in May when they celebrate the traditional festival of Sania Matsuri); for the National Museum of Tokyo in Ueno (www.tnm.go.jp); to take the boat back down to Odaïba…Just fresh air and magic, but above all a lesson in energy and the art of life!