Otemachi

Hotels don't get much sleeker than Hoshinoya Tokyo, a spectacularly modern take on a ryokan (traditional Japanese inn) that's ensconced in the city's thrumming financial district. You slip off your shoes when you get there and you're in another world-a calm, seductive, luxurious one-as you make your way down the sandalwood-scented, tatami-lined hallway. There's a sake-stocked lounge that's definitely worth a linger, but the onsen is the biggest draw, with its series of indoor and outdoor hot spring bathing pools on the seventeen-story monolith's top floor. The naturally salty water is therapeutic, energizing, head-clearing. You haven't really experienced Tokyo until you've gazed out at its twinkling lights from a bubbling tub of hot spring water.

Many hotels in Tokyo occupy the upper floors of skyscrapers, but none can compete with the majesty of Aman’s first city hotel.

Japan’s countryside is home to many ryokans, traditional inns where guests relax in serene quarters and take dips in natural hot springs. For years, Tokyo has lacked that level of tradition and pampering, but ryokan operator Hoshinoya has righted that wrong with its first hotel in the country’s capital. Taking up all seventeen floors of a building in the city’s Otemachi neighborhood, Hoshinoya is unlike any other hotel in the country, if not the world. For starters, you never wear your shoes around the hotel (they’re stored in lockers when you enter). Secondly, each floor has its own tea lounge serving food and drinks throughout the day, and each room is decorated in the traditional tatami mats and shoji screens. And if this isn’t the coolest thing, we don’t know what is: On the roof, there are single-sex outdoor baths, or onsen, fed by hot springs almost a mile beneath the city, so you can soak in mineral-enriched waters while you gaze up at the sky. (Tip: Do this at night.)