Petite balade dans le nouveau coeur de Tokyo

[Michael_Voyageur]

Petite balade dans le nouveau coeur de Tokyo

Source : The New York Times/IHT
Vu sur : IHT

TOKYO.
Let's meet at the spider.

A year ago, that invitation had no meaning. But since April l, the nine-meter-high Louise Bourgeois bronze sculpture has tiptoed into Tokyo's collective consciousness. The children of Japan who once worried about Godzilla are now sheltered by the eight welcoming limbs of an arachnid formally called "Maman."
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The spider is the jumping-off point for exploring Roppongi Hills, Tokyo's new "city in a city," a couple of kilometers from the Ginza, in Roppongi, a neighborhood of bars, restaurants and upscale housing.
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For style-obsessed Tokyo, this $4 billion complex of curving glass, minimalist metal and earthy stone arrives after a decade in gestation, offering an enticing conglomeration: cutting-edge restaurants, shopping, a hotel, movie theaters and art, as well as a 54-story office tower and a residential complex. Exploring Roppongi Hills is a new key to understanding Japan today - and tomorrow.
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Although 99 percent of the clientele is Japanese, the new complex is deliberately welcoming to English speakers. Signs are largely bilingual, and tenants are under orders from Minoru Mori, the real-estate force behind the ambitious development, to hire employees with basic English skills. The omnipresent free brochures, however, turn out to be all in Japanese.
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Still, remarked a friend over drinks, "The English here is better than at the Imperial Hotel." Rick Herman, a portfolio manager from Philadelphia, had temporarily defected from the Imperial, Tokyo's famous downtown standby, to join us at Maduro, the elegant new bar in the Grand Hyatt Tokyo at Roppongi Hills. Exuding an exclusive clublike air, the bar's door is a gray, anonymous block that silently slides open on approach. With warm, subdued lighting and an impressive wine list, Maduro was to be named Morgan, until the designer, a New Yorker, learned that the two anchor tenants of the Roppongi Hills office tower were to be Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs.
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For dinner, we went to Juniper, a Hyatt restaurant - which, like many excursions in Roppongi Hills, involved briefly getting lost. A Scandinavian-Japanese fusion menu at Juniper is based on the lean cuisine of northern Europe and served with Japanese attention to detail and subtlety. The smoked salmon and turbot came in just the right size portions to be savored, not gobbled.
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After dinner, we strolled Keyakizaka Street, window shopping our way past Louis Vuitton, Courrèges, Coach and La Perla lingerie. Just the way the mature trees add instant grace to the eight-month-old street, the high-class lineup of stores is making Keyakizaka an overnight competitor with the Ginza.
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The setting of the winter sun had chased away those who populate the place during the day: fashionistas, strollers through the gingkos and ponds of the traditional Japanese garden, high-tech tourists equipped with headsets as if on a museum tour.
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Some of the tourists had ducked inside the nearby TV Asahi headquarters building to sip tea at the café overlooking the garden or to browse in the lobby, decorated with costumes from historical soap operas. Others had gone up, 215 meters up, to the sky deck, Tokyo City View, reached by elevators that whisk visitors 52 stories up the Mori Tower, the glass-sheathed centerpiece of the complex.
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Peering through glass walls that seem to be polished every 18 minutes, a visitor can walk around the main office tower to see all of Tokyo, night or day. Perhaps the world's only high-rise that sells gin and tonics and wasabi muffins, its sky deck is open early enough to see Mount Fuji lighted by the morning sun and late enough to allow couples on dates to cuddle.
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The City View ticket - $14.25 for adults and $4.75 for younger children (at 109 yen to the dollar) - also allows admission to the Mori Art Museum on the two floors above the observation deck, at the pinnacle of the complex. Lured initially by the city panorama, visitors flow naturally up escalators and into the galleries of the museum.
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Leaving the fantasy of the streets, we walked into Starbucks, which is a port of entry to Tsutaya, a two-level store that sells books, magazines and the kind of manga (comic books) and anime (cartoons) that are now Japan's cultural calling card the world over. From there, we wended our way up one escalator, past Virgin Cinemas, past the food court, where a bagelry sells minibagels, and down an escalator to Heartland, a small, extremely popular standup bar.
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Inside, smoke hung in the air. Western men, largely 20-something traders from upstairs, bellowed into one another's faces and hoisted beers. A few brave Japanese women cautiously sipped drinks, while standing on the fringes.
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Out we spun into the fresh air, and then ducked into the Hyatt, with its lobby that features dramatic abstract sculptures. Not to be confused with the Park Hyatt Tokyo, the newest Hyatt in Roppongi Hills has become a destination in its own right since opening in April. The nine restaurants and bars are a major draw, including the French Kitchen on the second floor, a restaurant where the line between kitchen and customer dissolves.
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Fast becoming a favorite for Tokyo suburbanites on a weekend in town, the hotel has a spa on the fifth floor and a swimming pool that looks as if it were borrowed from a Greek myth.
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Up we went to our room on the 20th floor, where we tumbled into a firm bed. With blond-wood paneling and flat-screen TVs, the room projected a minimalist elegance. In the morning, I stretched out my right arm, held down a switch and raised the blackout curtain. Cool. Another button rolled up the second shade.
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Before us stretched western Tokyo's low-rise buildings, the high-rise cluster of Shibuya's entertainment district, outbound traffic clogged on Metropolitan Expressway No. 3, swatches of green parkland, and on and on, to the foothills of Mount Fuji, which, true to form, was blocked by clouds.
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Twelve hours at Roppongi Hills was a reminder that while the headlines say the Japanese economy is in a state of stagnation, the Japanese are always creating. One year ago, the experts were predicting failure. But Roppongi Hills drew 26 million visitors in its first six months, double the draw of Tokyo's two Disney parks. The complex gives a glimpse of a new Tokyo: high-rise, high-tech and high style.
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The New York Times
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Michael_Voyageur

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