Aman Tokyo

Aman Tokyo starts on the 33rd floor of an office tower in Otemachi, Tokyo's financial district, and its lobby goes up about 30 metres more. Kerry Hill Architects made it, in 2014, as the inside of a paper lantern: washi stretched over a shoji frame and lit by the day, above walls of basalt that shift between grey and blue as the light moves. In the middle stands an arrangement of branches the size of a small tree. The 84 rooms above are all suites, the smallest 71 square metres, each with a stone furo bath and floor-to-ceiling glass. The Garden View Suites look down on the Imperial Palace gardens and, on a clear day, out to Mount Fuji. From a window seat at dusk, the Skytree comes up out of the haze.

Recommended for grown-ups who want the middle of Tokyo at the door and a lobby 33 floors above it. Children are welcome, but there is no kids' club, and the evenings run to a sushi counter and cocktails in The Lounge. Five subway lines meet at Otemachi Station under the tower, Tokyo Station is five minutes' walk, and the East Gardens of the Imperial Palace are moments away on foot, for a walk before the spa: 2,500 square metres over two floors, where the 30-metre heated pool runs beside the windows with Shinjuku's towers in the distance. Dinner is Masakazu Hiraki's southern Italian cooking at Arva, or Edomae omakase at Musashi by Aman, across a counter of hinoki cypress. The Café by Aman pours champagne and tea all day down among the trees of the Otemachi Forest, at the foot of the tower: the one place in the hotel where the branches are still on the trees.