Janu Tokyo at Azabudai Hills – Aman’s first sister brand lands in Japan

So Aman – the brand that basically invented the concept of obscenely quiet, criminally expensive luxury resorts – decided to launch a sister brand. And instead of easing into it gently, they opened Janu Tokyo inside one of the most ambitious urban developments Japan has ever built. No pressure.

“Janu” means soul in Sanskrit. “Aman” means peace. The idea is that Janu leans into connection, energy and social life where Aman leans into silence and solitude. In practice at the Tokyo property: you get a 122-room hotel sitting inside the lower levels of Azabudai Hills Residence A, designed by Jean-Michel Gathy of Denniston Architects (the same guy behind multiple Aman properties), with a city suite that runs around ¥340,000 per night (roughly $2,265, before tax and service), five dining concepts, a genuinely impressive gym and pool situation, and a lounge bar that makes you want to cancel your dinner reservation and just stay put. The vlog above covers all of it – check-in through checkout across a full stay in March 2024, just days after the hotel opened. Here’s the breakdown.

What is Azabudai Hills and why does it matter for this hotel?

You can’t talk about Janu Tokyo without talking about the building it lives in, because Azabudai Hills is not just a building. It’s a ¥640 billion ($450 million USD) urban redevelopment project by Mori Building that opened in November 2023 – a few months before Janu. The complex covers 8.1 hectares in the Azabudai, Toranomon and Roppongi area of Minato-ku, Tokyo, and includes the Azabudai Hills Mori JP Tower (330 meters tall, currently one of the tallest buildings in Japan), two residential towers, four Garden Plaza buildings, offices, medical facilities, an international school, retail, and a 6,000 sqm central plaza.

Janu sits in Residence A, which tops out at 237 meters. The entrance experience is part of the stay in a way that most urban hotels can’t claim – you’re walking through a development at a scale that makes you feel like you’ve stepped into a near-future version of Tokyo. The vlog spends a solid chunk of time just exploring the complex, including the free public observation deck at Mori JP Tower – genuinely worth doing and genuinely free, which is almost insulting given how good the view is.

Getting there is straightforward once you know the area:

• 🚇 Kamiyacho Station – 6 minutes on foot
• 🚇 Roppongi-Itchome Station – 6 minutes on foot
• ✈️ Haneda Airport (HND) – approximately 30 minutes by taxi or express train
• ✈️ Narita International Airport (NRT) – approximately 90 minutes

Haneda is the obvious choice if you have any flexibility with your flights. The difference between 30 minutes and 90 minutes when you’re already tired from a long-haul is significant, and Haneda’s international terminal is excellent.

The city suite – what ¥340,000 a night looks like

The vlog room tour is 15 minutes long. That’s either excessive or entirely justified depending on how you feel about the suite, and by the end of that section it’s pretty clearly justified.

The city suite at Janu Tokyo runs ¥340,000 per night (roughly $2,265 USD at time of filming, excluding tax and service charges, breakfast included). For Tokyo luxury hotel pricing this is high but not insane – the Aman Tokyo city view rooms go considerably higher, and you’re getting a new product from the same design DNA in a landmark building.

What you’re actually getting in the room:

• 🏙️ City views from floor-to-ceiling windows – Azabudai Hills sits at one of the higher elevations in central Tokyo, so the outlook is genuinely dramatic
• 🛁 Oversized bathroom with deep soaking tub and separate rain shower – standard for a suite at this level but executed with the Gathy touch, which means materials feel considered and nothing feels like it was chosen from a catalog
• 🛏️ Living area separation – the suite configuration gives you an actual living room rather than a room with a chair and a desk shoved in the corner
• ☕ In-room dining setup – full room service menu available (the video shows the menu in detail), minibar, premium tea and coffee
• 🎨 Interior design by Jean-Michel Gathy / Denniston Architects – warm tones, natural materials, the kind of restraint that doesn’t feel cold. It reads Japanese in sensibility without going full Ryokan cosplay

The checkout moment in the vlog is worth watching for one specific reason – the personalized name tag guests receive at departure. Small detail, but it’s the kind of thing that sticks in your memory and it says something about how the hotel thinks about the end of a stay, not just the beginning.

The gym and pool – not an afterthought

A lot of luxury city hotels treat the gym and pool as checkbox amenities. Janu does not. The vlog dedicates nearly 8 minutes to this section and it earns them.

The wellness facilities at Janu Tokyo are positioned as a core part of the brand identity – the Janu concept globally is meant to emphasize social wellness and connection alongside the quiet luxury of an Aman. In practice at the Tokyo property this means a proper gym setup with equipment that doesn’t feel apologetic, and a pool space that has actual design thought behind it rather than the “we had 200 square meters left on the basement level” energy that plagues most city hotel pools.

The spa completes the picture. If you’re coming to Tokyo specifically for a wellness-focused stay rather than a purely exploratory one, Janu is a legitimately strong option – possibly the strongest new opening in the city for that specific need.

Dining – five concepts, zero filler

This is where Janu Tokyo puts real distance between itself and the competition. Five distinct dining and bar concepts in a 122-room hotel is ambitious. Let’s go through each one.

🥩 Janu Grill

The main restaurant. Dinner service covered in the vlog, and then breakfast the following morning – two very different experiences from the same kitchen, which is a good sign. The grill format works well in a Tokyo context and the breakfast spread is the kind of thing that makes you sit at the table longer than you planned. Morning light, a proper Japanese-Western breakfast, unhurried service. If you’re doing the breakfast-included rate (which you should be), start here every morning without question.

🍝 Janu Mercato

Italian. The vlog covers dinner here and the format is Italian osteria-style – more convivial, less ceremonial than a formal Italian fine dining room. In Tokyo’s restaurant landscape Italian is intensely competitive (Japanese-Italian crossover cooking is a real and excellent thing here), so “we have an Italian restaurant” is not automatically impressive. Based on what the vlog shows, Mercato holds its own – but it’s also the concept you might skip if you’re only staying one or two nights and want to eat outside the hotel.

🥢 HU JING – Chinese restaurant

The menu walk-through is in the vlog and it looks serious. Chinese fine dining in Tokyo is an underrated category – the city has some excellent Cantonese and regional Chinese restaurants that don’t get nearly the attention that the Japanese food scene does. HU JING is positioned at the upper end of this. Worth noting for guests who default to Japanese food for every meal in Tokyo – this is a legitimate alternative for one of your dinners.

🔥 SUMI – charcoal grill

The menu is shown in the vlog. The name gives you the concept – sumi means charcoal in Japanese. Robata-adjacent, ingredient-focused, the kind of restaurant that makes sense in Tokyo and makes sense in a hotel trying to reflect its location rather than exist in a bubble above it.

🍣 Iigura – sushi

Menu shown in the vlog. A dedicated sushi restaurant inside the hotel is the kind of thing that sounds obvious for a Tokyo luxury hotel but is actually rarer than you’d think at this level. If you’re not going to venture out for a counter sushi experience (which, you should, Tokyo sushi is worth the effort), Iigura gives you a solid in-house option.

🍰 Patisserie and Janu Lounge/Bar

The patisserie section of the vlog lands well – the pastry program looks genuinely considered rather than decorative. The Janu Lounge is the social heart of the hotel and the bar program deserves attention. The vlog spends time here and it’s clear this space works at multiple hours of the day – afternoon coffee, pre-dinner drinks, post-dinner nightcap. The kind of hotel bar you actually want to use rather than walk past.

There’s also an Aman Boutique on-site – not dining obviously, but worth knowing if you’re an Aman collector or want to pick up something from the brand while in Tokyo.

The Aman connection – what Janu actually is

If you’re an Aman person reading this, the obvious question is: how does Janu feel compared to the mothership? Based on everything the vlog shows and the design philosophy the brand has communicated, Janu is explicitly trying to be louder, more social, and more connected to the urban energy around it. Aman Tokyo is 30 floors up, serene, cathedral-quiet. Janu Tokyo is in a complex designed to be a city within a city. Different intention, similar execution quality.

The Jean-Michel Gathy design connection is real and visible. The material choices, the spatial proportions, the restraint that doesn’t read as coldness – it’s recognizably the same design language at a different tempo. Whether that’s enough to satisfy people who come to Aman specifically for the silence is a fair question. For everyone else, Janu Tokyo makes a compelling argument for being the most thoughtfully designed new luxury hotel in Tokyo since Aman itself opened in 2014.

Points angle: Janu is part of the Aman group but currently operates outside major hotel loyalty programs. There’s no Marriott Bonvoy or World of Hyatt redemption path here. You’re paying cash. Factor that into your comparison if points-based luxury travel is your primary strategy – at $2,265+ per night cash with no points offset, it’s a meaningful commitment.

Getting to Tokyo – flights and timing

Tokyo has two airports and the choice matters more than most cities:

• ✈️ Haneda (HND) – 30 minutes to Azabudai Hills, significantly more convenient, excellent international terminal, most major carriers now operate transatlantic and transpacific routes here
• ✈️ Narita (NRT) – 90 minutes, older airport, cheaper flights but the time and taxi cost difference often erases the savings

Best time to visit Tokyo: March and April for cherry blossom season – the most requested time, books out early, and genuinely worth the fuss. October and November for autumn colors, slightly cooler weather, and fewer crowds than spring. The vlog was filmed in March 2024, just days after Janu opened, which means the cherry blossom timing was essentially perfect. December and January are the quietest months with the sharpest pricing – good for people who want Tokyo without the crowd overhead.

Avoid the first week of May (Golden Week) and mid-August (Obon holiday week) if crowds and inflated domestic prices are a concern. They are. Avoid both.

What it actually costs

Let’s be direct:

• 💴 City suite – ¥340,000 / ~$2,265 USD per night, tax and service excluded, breakfast included
• 💴 Other room categories – entry-level rooms start lower; suites go higher. The hotel has 122 rooms across multiple categories so there are options below the suite price point
• 💴 Dining – budget ¥20,000-50,000 ($130-330) per person for dinner at the fine dining concepts, more at Terra-equivalent experiences
• 💴 No points redemption path – Janu currently sits outside the major hotel loyalty ecosystems. Cash only.

The honest comparison: Aman Tokyo runs higher per night. The Park Hyatt Tokyo (the Lost in Translation hotel, yes) runs lower but is a Hyatt category 8 bookable with points. The Peninsula Tokyo, Four Seasons, and Mandarin Oriental all sit in a similar or slightly lower cash bracket to Janu with points redemption paths. If your primary optimization is points-per-dollar, Janu is not your best play in Tokyo right now. If you want the newest, most design-forward luxury hotel in the city’s most interesting new development, it is.

Frequently asked questions

📹 Video by ST Travel