It’s a Family Affair: The New Otani
The New Otani Hotel, located a la Akasaka-Mitsuke, has its own helipad.
The sprawling lobby floor spread out into shops an, with floor-to-ceiling window view of the gardens, a bar complete with swanky grand piano. Ivory. Live jazz perfomance in the evenings. My mother, younger sister and I found ourselves somewhere about the lofty heights of the 26th floor – out of over thirty. Perhaps not such a feat within Tokyo, but something quite vertigo inducing to un-metropolised hicks such as ourselves (I say this lovingly, bien sur).
The plan was to stay at the Otani briefly, then pack in a whorl of sightseeing during our 3/4 days at Kyoto, in time for a triumphant week long return to Tokyo (and to new lodgings).
(As it happens, at first, I was too distracted by showing off to my new city-mouse abilities, to take that many photos…)
One totally awesome feature to the bathroom was the surround sound style radio, complete with stations for mainstream music taste (jazz; rock; Jpop, etc). This made a great opportunity to, say, brush teeth and air guitar, or dry hair and dance ridiculously badly to samba. Not that such things were done.
