Designer destination: The Tokyo Edition, Ginza

This article is part of FT Globetrotter’s guide to Tokyo

One of the best things about The Tokyo Edition, Ginza is how easy it is to leave.

That is not a criticism of one of Ginza’s only boutique hotels, but should be the main point of a stay. Set right in the middle of one of the most exciting neighbourhoods in one of the world’s greatest cities, The Edition is designed to encourage guests to get lost in Tokyo’s wild array of shops, bars and restaurants. 

And if a boutique hotel is judged by how easy it makes exploring the city in which it is based, then The Edition does its job very well indeed. The rooms are excellent, the restaurant does the needful and the bars are good enough to justify staying inside if you run out of energy.

Design

The Edition, Ginza, the second of its kind in Tokyo (it has a sibling property near Roppongi), opened its doors in March, two years behind schedule after the Covid-19 pandemic put the original plans on hold. A thoroughly modern style with flashes of Japanese aesthetics pervades the Ginza site, which was designed by famed Japanese architect Kengo Kuma and dreamt up by Ian Schrager, one of the creators of the boutique hotel concept who then built on the idea for the Marriott International group.

Since it opened, business has been booming as foreign tourists have flocked to Tokyo, drawn in part by the weak yen, which makes the cost of The Edition seem more reasonable when viewed in dollars or euros. A typical room costs upwards of ¥120,000, which is about $765 per night.

Rooms

When my wife and I arrived for our stay, we were greeted by a cold drink in a lobby made up of clean lines and soft furnishings, with a bar on one side and a dramatic white staircase on the other that leads up to the hotel’s 86 rooms, which includes 10 suites, and the rest of its 14 floors.

Our room, at around 45 square metres, was much bigger than we had expected for a hotel in this area. With dark wooden floors, a long built-in window seat and calming aesthetic — aided by The Edition’s signature Le Labo black-tea scent — it provided a respite from the busy streets below. The king-size bed was draped with a white faux-fur throw (another Edition signature, we were told) and faced seat-to-ceiling windows that look out on Tokyo’s skyscraper menagerie.

Location

It is not easy to draw parallels between Japan’s capital and other cities, but perhaps Ginza is best described as what a luxury shopping district in Paris would feel like with more skyscrapers, less litter and some karaoke. Just a 10-minute walk from Tokyo Station, the bullet train gateway to anywhere in Japan, Ginza is home to a plethora of upscale boutiques, sushi bars and cocktail joints, including what we consider the best basement cocktail bar we’ve ever been in, Little Smith, which is 10 minutes on foot from the hotel.

Amenities

The Edition does not have a pool or a spa and only a small, if modern and well-equipped, gym, which would struggle if more than three people tried to exercise at the same time. But again, this should be acceptable to those who chose the hotel for its location since they will be happy lacing up runners and heading out to do laps of the streets or the Imperial Palace, which is about a kilometre away.

Food and drink

There is plenty to enjoy at the hotel too, including a rooftop bar with views across the city that is good for taking the kind of photo of Tokyo that lands somewhere between urban dystopia and paradise. But with more serious drinking in mind, we decided to settle into the Punch Room on the second floor, yet another Edition signature and the first one in Tokyo. 

The bar is darkly lit with incredibly attentive staff, and its cocktails are excellent — suitably potent while being inventive, with a focus on Japanese ingredients. We tried the New Lemon Sawa-ish, made up of tequila, lemon, yuzu, mint and tonic, which were good enough to justify a second round.

The Punch Room appears to draw its fair share of influencer types, which is fine so long as you treat that as an opportunity for anthropology. The only other potential issue we had was the need to tell the waiters to stop bringing us snacks — we didn’t want to risk filling up before dinner.

Dinner was upstairs at Sophie, The Edition’s restaurant, which is styled on a French bistro. We had three-courses with wine pairing, which included a burrata caprese, before excellent Hokkaido scallops and similarly well-cooked Wagyu steak. The desserts — citrus savarin and cherry millefeuille — were light and pleasing. The wine list was short but impressive.

Again, it is no criticism of the hotel or Sophie to suggest that you might be better off at one of the several Michelin-starred restaurants that call Ginza home — or the many izakaya, soba noodle or yakitori joints that also jostle for space — but if you are in need of a quieter night in, it will certainly do the trick.

My wife and I ended our evening in Little Smith, that basement cocktail bar around the corner from the hotel, congratulating ourselves on staying up until almost midnight on a rare evening away from the kids.

David Keohane was a guest of The Tokyo Edition, Ginza