Four Seasons Hotel Tokyo at Otemachi Review

The Four Seasons Hotel Tokyo at Otemachi takes up the top floors of the Otemachi One Tower, right next to the Imperial Palace gardens and a short walk from Tokyo Station. It opened in 2020, it has about 190 rooms, and the lobby is up on the 39th floor. It's the second Four Seasons in Tokyo (the small one in Marunouchi is the other), and the design is by Jean-Michel Gathy's studio, the same people behind the Four Seasons in Bangkok.

I'll admit I booked it as the sensible choice. In my Tokyo reviews, I kept telling people to book the Aman for the room and then move to the Four Seasons down the road, so I wanted to make sure I was right about that. I was.

A typical night here is about $1,050, which is about the same as the Park Hyatt and roughly half the price of the Aman. And for that money, you get the same palace view the Aman sells, plus a better bar, a better breakfast (most mornings) and a much warmer welcome.

Things I Loved about the Four Seasons Tokyo at Otemachi

The view. We were in a Deluxe room on a high floor, facing west over the Imperial Palace gardens, and the first morning I opened the curtains (they open themselves) there was Mount Fuji, white-capped and perfectly clear, floating behind the Shinjuku towers. I actually yelled. You can't count on it, especially in summer, but on clear winter mornings it's there.

In the evening, the palace grounds go dark and green and the city lights come up all around them, and it's just as good.

The room. Even the entry rooms are about 50 square metres, with wide hallways, which is rare in Tokyo. It's calm and warm, with metal and mineral tones, gold and lapis-blue accents, washi-and-lattice sliding doors, a chaise by the window and a big walk-in wardrobe. The bed is one of the best I slept in on the whole trip.

The little things are lovely. There's a Japanese tea set with house tea blends, a Nespresso machine, water refilled at turndown, thick pyjamas, and leather-handled umbrellas by the door. Our welcome was strawberries and Royal Blue Tea (the same bottled tea they serve in first class on JAL), and turndown came with a little card for the next day's weather and what to wear. On our last night there was a teddy bear on the bed. I'm a grown adult. I took it home.

The bathroom. The bathroom is big and calm, in dark stone and limestone, with a deep freestanding tub, a separate walk-in rain shower, two basins, a Toto toilet in its own little room, Frédéric Malle bath products (the magnolia one, which I loved) and hinoki bath salts made for the hotel. In a lot of the palace-side rooms, the tub sits right by the window. A long soak at the end of the day is the thing I remember most.

My one tip on rooms…book the palace side. The rooms facing the gardens are far better than the ones looking at the neighbouring towers, and if you can stretch, the corner Premier rooms (about 61 square metres) look two ways.

The lobby. The lift opens on the 39th floor onto a long, shallow pool of water that reflects the sky and the city, with a big domed cupola overhead and seasonal calligraphy on the walls. The corridor to the bar and restaurants is lined with books and curios. It's calm, warm and very Four Seasons, in a good way. There's a silver-leaf chandelier at the entrance downstairs that I stopped to stare at every time, and fresh ikebana changes with the season.

Virtù. Virtù is the hotel bar, Parisian-style and moody, with huge windows over the skyline, and it's one of the best bars in Asia (it's on the Asia's 50 Best Bars list this year). The whisky and cognac list is extraordinary. Order the Smoked Ume Fashioned, smoked with cherry wood, and if you're staying in, they'll usually hold you a table.

Dinner at est. est is the hotel's fine-dining restaurant, a ten-course Japanese-French menu where almost everything comes from Japan…Hokkaido abalone in beurre blanc, Spanish mackerel with a kumquat crust, Hokkaido beef with yuzu kosho. It's a special night, and the dining room looks out over the city lights. If you'd rather keep it casual, Pigneto, the Italian restaurant, does a proper Neapolitan pizza (including one that comes with its own tin of caviar to add yourself).

The pool and spa. The spa is on the 39th floor, and it's really lovely. They give you tea while you fill in the form, and each treatment starts with the ring of a little round bell. The 20-metre pool is black-tiled with a metallic floor that makes the water shimmer, and there's a heated hydrotherapy pool with pressure waterfalls next to it. The changing rooms have a hot Japanese bath by the window (the women's side looks straight at the Skytree), a sauna and a steam room. I went every evening. If you book one treatment, make it the Yakusugi Forest Renewal, a body treatment with cypress from the ancient forests of Yakushima. The whole room smells like a forest after rain. The 24-hour gym is big, too, with the palace grounds right outside the windows.

Afternoon tea in The Lounge. Afternoon tea comes with 90 minutes of free-flowing tea and coffee, and the pastries are beautiful. The Lounge also has coffee, tea and pastries out all night, which is a lifesaver when the jet lag wakes you at 3am. If you're a tea person, pay a little extra for the gyokuro, a precious green tea they brew three times at different temperatures. At the end, you eat the leaves with a little soy sauce and sudachi citrus. I'd never done that before.

Breakfast, on a quiet morning. Breakfast at Pigneto faces the palace, and on a clear morning there's Mount Fuji floating at the end of the view while you eat. There's a buffet plus a long menu of dishes cooked to order, and in three mornings we hardly repeated a thing. The French toast with custard is the one to order, the eggs Benedict are excellent, and the Japanese set is beautiful. When it's not busy, it's one of the best hotel breakfasts in Tokyo.

The service. The staff here are warm and very good. They learned our names on the first day, the bar remembered our order by the second visit, and when I mentioned a birthday in my booking, there was a bouquet at check-in and a little chocolate cake waiting in the room. Housekeeping was lovely, too…they leave your toiletries laid out on a linen cloth and fold your clothes.

The app. Four Seasons lets you message the hotel through its app before you arrive, and it's genuinely useful here. We set up a birthday surprise, asked for a crib, and booked a table at est, all before we landed. Once we were there, the front desk did the same for things far beyond the hotel…one of the team phoned a ski resort in Karuizawa for us and booked the bus there and back, in Japanese, when we were completely stuck.

The location. You're right next to the palace gardens, which are perfect for an early run, with Otemachi Station underneath the building and Tokyo Station about a 15-minute walk away. For bullet-train day trips and getting anywhere on the subway, it's ideal.

Things That Could Be Better

Breakfast at peak times. When it's quiet, breakfast is great. But at 8:30 on a busy morning there was a queue at the door, the staff were rushed, and a couple of the hot dishes came out lukewarm. Go early, or have it in the room.

The concierge and restaurant bookings. The on-site staff are wonderful, but the concierge can be slow with the hard restaurant bookings. If there's a sushi counter or tasting menu you really want, book it yourself the minute the reservation window opens, and use the concierge for everything else.

The neighbourhood is quiet. Otemachi is the banking district. It's beautifully connected, but the streets are empty at night and at weekends, and you'll take the subway or a taxi to most dinners.

Getting up there. The entrance is discreet and easy to miss, because the hotel is inside an office tower. You take one lift up to the lobby, then a second lift to your room, and at check-in times the lobby can get busy. When cars are arriving one after another, check-in feels a little brisk.

Not much for kids. Children are welcome and the staff are lovely with them, but there's no kids' club and not much for them to do beyond the pool. It's really a hotel for grown-ups and business travellers, so with little ones, plan your days outside.

The pool is formal. Swim caps are compulsory, photography is mostly banned, and it's very much a lap pool. It's beautiful, but it's not a place to float about with a book.

Four Seasons or Aman?

This is the comparison I keep coming back to, because they're a few minutes' walk apart and look over the same gardens.

The Aman has the more beautiful room, and that stone bath by the window is something special. But it costs about twice as much, the food is good without being memorable, and the service is patchier than you'd expect. The Four Seasons gives you a lovely room with the same view, a better bar and dining, a warmer welcome, and about $1,000 a night back in your pocket.

So for most trips, book the Four Seasons. If it's a big celebration and you want the most beautiful room in Tokyo, do two nights at the Aman first, then move here.

And the Park Hyatt? It costs about the same, and it has the famous bar and the film. But its rooms are bland since the renovation and it's a long walk to Shinjuku Station, so I'd sleep here and go up to the New York Bar for a drink.

Overall

I think the Four Seasons Tokyo at Otemachi is right for almost everyone: couples, first-timers, business travellers and anyone planning bullet-train day trips out of Tokyo Station. Families will be well looked after, though there's no kids' club, so plan your days outside. It's the wrong pick only if you want nightlife outside the door, or a very traditional Japanese stay with tatami and a futon. For everyone else, it's the safest bet in the city.

For a once-in-a-lifetime room, I'd book the Aman for a couple of nights. For the palace view at a little less, the Palace Hotel. And for something more Japanese, with tatami and a rooftop hot spring, Hoshinoya Tokyo.

So here's my bottom line. I gave it 8.5 out of 10. The view, the bath and Virtù are the best things about it, the busy breakfast and the quiet streets are the worst, and it's the smartest place to stay in Tokyo.

If you're booking it

Stay three or four nights. Book a Deluxe room with the Imperial Garden view, or a corner Premier room if you want more space, and choose a rate that includes breakfast. Mention a birthday or anniversary when you book. Book est and your hard-to-get restaurants yourself, as early as you can, and ask the hotel to hold a table at Virtù. Rates start around $800 in the quiet weeks and run past $1,600 in cherry-blossom season. For the best chance of seeing Fuji, come between November and February. Haneda is 20 to 45 minutes by car.