A visit to Tokyo’s revitalized Toranomon district reveals a bold blueprint for urban living, and the occasional glimpse of the past.

Photographs by Chris Schalkx

*Left to right:* The living room of a suite at Hotel Toranomon Hills; a receptionist at the Hotel.

On a winter’s afternoon in Tokyo, I look out over the seemingly infinite sprawl of the Japanese capital. This is not the view from one of the city’s sky-high observation decks, mind you, but rather a metropolis in miniature on permanent display in the basement of a nondescript downtown office building. The 1:1000 scale model of Tokyo’s 13 central wards — that’s about 230 square kilometers of cityscape — encompasses everything from the soaring Tokyo Skytree (the world’s tallest broadcast tower) to the donut-shaped Ajinomoto Stadium, all painstakingly re-created from Styrofoam and hand-cut paper.

I’m at the Mori Building Urban Lab, a research facility established by leading Japanese real estate developer Mori Building Co., whose logo crowns skyscrapers all over the city. With each click of his remote control, Masa Yamamoto, the company’s peppy public relations manager, lights up a different element on the diorama: highways, metro networks, and green spaces in a jumbled city grid that seems to have gone astray. “Tokyo worked so hard after World War II that Japan became the second-largest economy in the world,” Yamamoto says. “But we lost direction, we lost a clear vision for the future.” The light lingers on a complex of four skyscrapers at the center of the display. This is Toranomon Hills, one of Mori’s latest projects in the revitalized Toranomon business district just north of the Eiffel-esque Tokyo Tower. “We envisioned the development as a city within a city,” Yamamoto explains. “It’s not just a place to work, like many financial centers around the world, but a new heart of the city where people can live and work and enjoy themselves all within walking distance.”

While that must sound like music to the ears of Tokyo’s white-collar workers who, Yamamato tells me, commute for an average of two hours each day, it’s also a boon to frequent visitors like myself. Since The Toranomon Hills’ first tower opened back in 2014, the immediate vicinity has seen the arrival of a clutch of five-star hotels, from Andaz Tokyo to the Kengo Kuma–designed Tokyo Edition, Toranomon. The most recent opening is Hotel Toranomon Hills (from US$460 a night), part of Hyatt’s design-forward Unbound Collection. It spans the ground level and 11th to 14th floors of the art-studded Toranomon Hills Station Tower, which, when construction finished at the end of 2023, became the final piece of the Toranomon Hills puzzle.

The 205-room property punches well above its weight for a business hotel. My corner suite, wrapped in floor-to-ceiling windows that frame views of Tokyo Tower, feels like a hush-hush haven floating among the skyscrapers. Blond woods and curvy furniture meld Japanese simplicity with warm Scandinavian design, and the bathroom’s deep soaking tub hits the spot after a day’s walk around town. Other perks include access to The Lounge, a two-level fusion between a co-working space and a classic hotel club lounge where early arrivals can take a shower before their room is available, and laptop users can fuel up with a grab-what-you-want buffet of Japanese snacks.

*Left to right:* A concept store at T-Market; melted disco balls adorn Hotel Toranomon Hills’ Le Pristine restaurant.

A bar at T-Market; hamachi and hairy crab with pistachios and black radish at Le Pristine, the Sergio Herman–helmed restaurant at Hotel Toranomon Hills. — *Left to right:* A bar at T-Market; *hamachi* and hairy crab with pistachios and black radish at Le Pristine, the Sergio Herman–helmed restaurant at Hotel Toranomon Hills.

Hotel Toranomon Hills brought in Dutch chef Sergio Herman (who earned a trio of Michelin stars for his first restaurant, Oud Sluis, in the Netherlands’ westernmost province of Zeeland) to mastermind its fine-dining concept, Le Pristine. Glammed up with melted disco balls by Rotterdam-based art collective Rotganzen, the restaurant sees Herman combine ingredients and recipes from seafood-rich Zeeland with Japan’s maritime bounty, resulting in globe-hopping tasting menus that might include hamachi (yellowtail) and hairy crab topped with ribbons of black radish, or Herman’s signature orecchiette Zeelandaise, which brims with crustaceans and shellfish.

The next morning after breakfast, I set out for a stroll. Toranomon Hills’ interconnecting bridges and underground network of tunnels make it feel like a human-size termite mound swarming with black-suited salarymen on their way between meetings. But it’s certainly not all business. Up on the top floors of the Station Tower is Tokyo Node, a contemporary art and performance space complete with a volumetric video studio and a rooftop pool; on show during my visit is a site-specific exhibition by photographer and film director Mika Ninagawa. And down in the building’s basement is T-Market, where home decor concept stores abut French-tinged bistros and smart izakaya counters.

Later, I saunter over to Toranomon Yokocho on the third floor of the Toranomon Hills Business Tower. Styled after one of Tokyo’s eatery-lined alleyways, or yokocho, the upscale food hall is home to offshoots of more than a dozen renowned local restaurants. I pass by men in sharp suits inhaling noodles at Ayu Ramen Plus, and spot a couple sharing a tonkatsu pork cutlet at Tsukanto, a project by chef Naohisa Ohashi of Michelin-awarded but now-defunct Tirpse. I opt to have my own lunch at Shushokudo, which, aside from serving excellent karaage fried chicken, distills its own gin on-site from seasonal Japanese botanicals and local spring water.

And then, silence. At the base of Toranomon Hills’ southernmost tower, I follow a greenery-lined walkway to a narrow lane that snakes upward from the back of the complex. As I pass a lone red torii gate, the silvery high-rises disappear behind me and make way for fragments of an older Tokyo. There’s the venerable Eikanin Temple, where wood carvings and stone monkey statues hide among timeworn shrines. The close-packed tombstones in the adjoining cemetery include that of Sugita Genpaku, a pioneering 18th-century physician. When I reach the top of the hill, the air is thick with the sweet scent of incense wafting from the Atago Shrine, which rests among electric-yellow gingko trees. Back when Tokyo was known as Edo, this 26-meter rise was the city’s highest viewpoint, and visitors could see as far as Mount Fuji. Those views have long since been hemmed in by buildings, though workers from the surrounding offices still climb the steep Shussei no Ishiden (“Stone Steps to Success”) leading up to the shrine to pray for prosperity.

*Left to right:* A steep flight of stone steps leads to the hilltop Atago Shrine; overlooking the foyer of the Toranomon Hills Station Tower.

*Left to right:* The Deli Fu Cious café at Toranomon Yokocho; the swirling architecture of Azabudai Hills.

I encounter other remnants of the past at Toranomon Sunaba, a century-old soba restaurant housed in a traditional two-story wooden building. Not far away, a tiny underground gallery at exit 11 of Toranomon Station displays one of the last remaining sections of the stone wall that once lined Edo Castle’s outer moat. Toranomon, which translates as “Tiger Gate,” took its name from the southernmost gate of the castle.

But in this fast-moving part of town, the focus is firmly on tomorrow, and even Toranomon Hills is already yesterday’s news. A few blocks south, another Mori megaproject called Azabudai Hills wrapped up construction at the end of 2023. Where Toranomon Hills is marketed as Tokyo’s innovation hub, Azabudai Hills revolves around wellness and sustainability. The complex, an undulating jumble of gritty stone and sloping rooftops designed by London-based Heatherwick Studio, houses juice bars, vegan cafés, and outposts from decades-old Japanese enterprises specializing in everything from powdered dashi to polished rice and medicinal teas. The city’s newest luxury hotel, Janu Tokyo, a hotly anticipated offshoot of Aman, occupies one of the lipstick-shaped skyscrapers, while the adjoining Azabudai Hills Mori JP Tower now claims the title of Japan’s tallest building.

Standing here, among trees growing from roofs and a swirling maze of ponds and footbridges, feels like taking a peek into the future of urban living. I am reminded of something that Masa Yamamoto told me earlier at the Mori Building Urban Lab: “We are finally rethinking how we coexist with nature. Soon, we’ll be able to live to be 100 years old. But if you and your environment aren’t healthy, what’s the point?”

*Left to right:* Neon signage at Tokyo Node; venerable soba restaurant Toranomon Sunaba.

This article originally appeared in the June/July 2024 print issue of DestinAsian magazine (“Capital Gains”).

Time for Toranomon

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