The Night before Departure
JAPAN · TOKYO
Tokyo Station Hotel, Marunouchi, Tokyo
If you are jet-lagged at 2am, this is the right place to be. The Shinkansen leaves at dawn.
Marunouchi — the ground directly east of the palace, once the residential quarter where the shogun’s most powerful lords maintained their great houses — became the face of that transformation. The lords had gone. The Meiji government rebuilt the district in Western brick, until the locals called it “Mitsubishi’s London.” Tokyo Station opened here in 1914, the culmination of it all: a red brick building of considerable grandeur facing the Imperial Palace grounds across a broad boulevard.
On October 1, 1964, the first Shinkansen left from the platforms below. Ten days before the Tokyo Olympics. Less than twenty years after the war. Japan’s superexpress of dreams, moving west toward Osaka at speeds the world had never seen.
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or directly at tokyostationhotel.co.jp
The Building
The architect was Kingo Tatsuno, who had studied in London and came home to build the most Western-looking building in Japan directly facing the Imperial Palace. Red brick, Renaissance domes, the long horizontal facade that still surprises. The hotel opened a year after the station in 1915, and has been inside the building ever since when it closed for restoration— through the earthquake of 1923 that left it standing while much of Tokyo fell, through the damage of 1945, except for six years between 2006 and 2012, when the building was restored to exactly what Tatsuno drew. 150 rooms inside the Tokyo Station.
Yasunari Kawabata and Edogawa Ranpo were among the writers who stayed here, drawing on the hotel for their work.
The Stay
The dome rooms are the ones to request — circular rooms inside the two great domed towers, the curved walls following Tatsuno’s original geometry, the view across the forecourt toward the Imperial Palace. At night, when the station stills, walk out onto the forecourt and turn back to look at the building. Then walk toward the Imperial Palace. Twenty minutes through the empty boulevard, the palace walls emerging from the dark. This is one of the finest walks in Tokyo.
Jet-lagged at 2am, Marunouchi belongs to almost no one. The district that was once Mitsubishi’s London, now the financial heart of Tokyo, is at this hour entirely yours.
The Particulars
The dome rooms — inside the curved walls of Tatsuno’s original domes. Limited number. Book directly and request them explicitly.
The Shinkansen departure — check in, sleep, wake early, take the Shinkansen west to Kyoto, south to Hiroshima, north to Sendai. The journey from bedroom to platform is four minutes. This is the whole point of one night here.
The Imperial Palace walk — leave the station at night and walk west along the empty boulevard. Twenty minutes. The palace walls, the moat, the dark trees. A different Tokyo entirely.
The forecourt at night — stand outside and look back at the building you are sleeping in.
Who it’s for
For those who find that the feeling of being about to leave somewhere is one of the best feelings there is. For travellers taking the Shinkansen west or north who want the departure to be part of the journey rather than just the beginning of it. For anyone who has been jet-lagged in Tokyo at 2am and found, unexpectedly, that the stillness of the station at that hour — the red brick lit from below, the palace grounds dark across the boulevard, the city quiet for once — was exactly what they needed.
Not a hotel to arrive at and settle into. One night, the dome room, the walk toward the palace in the dark, the Shinkansen at dawn.
For two and a half centuries, the city was called Edo. The shogun governed from the castle at its centre while the emperor remained in Kyoto, the ancient imperial capital. In 1868, the Meiji Restoration changed everything — the emperor moved east, the castle grounds became the Imperial Palace, and the city was renamed Tokyo: the Eastern Capital.
or directly at tokyostationhotel.co.jp
book here via booking.com