Take me to Midtown

A few years ago, the Mori Building Company, one of Tokyo’s biggest real estate developers, launched Roppongi Hills, a highly acclaimed urban center composed of office towers, apartment buildings, a five-star hotel (the Grand Hyatt), an art museum atop Tokyo’s tallest building, and a world-class shopping mall with scores of fine restaurants.

The world took notice as architects, developers, mayors and tourists alike came from around the world to visit and study this amazing agglomeration of architecture and commercial activity.

Two weeks ago, a new urban development was unveiled called Tokyo Midtown, this time by rival Japanese developer Mitsui Fudosan. Needless to say, it’s blown Roppongi Hills right out of the water. The entire site is about 10 hectares of land in central Tokyo, also within the Roppongi district and built on the former Japan Defense Agency site. Tokyo Midtown features office buildings, serviced apartments, a five-star hotel (the Ritz-Carlton), three museums, a spectacular public park, and what is perhaps the most elegant new shopping mall ever built.

A lot of urban centers that developers build tend not to turn out as planned. Most of the time too much gets built too fast and every last leasable square meter is maximized. Walking around Tokyo Midtown, one hardly gets that impression. In fact, it felt like the structures had been around for years, even though it had only opened the week before. It boggled my mind how green the grass was in the park — one would expect patches of brown all over. Leave it to the Japanese to have grass as green as Astroturf on opening day. I imagined their horticulturists must have grown the grass in a countryside greenhouse for months before airlifting it into place in Tokyo Midtown.

With only a day to spend exploring Tokyo Midtown, I had to narrow my sights on what I expected to be the top attractions — the museums, the shopping mall and the food hall. Starting with the museums, there are three to hit: 21/21 Design Sight, a design museum; Suntory Art Museum, showcasing traditional Japanese art; and the Fuji Xerox Art Space, which exhibited the company’s impressive print collection.

Of the three, 21/21 is most impressive. The museum is housed in a spectacular new building designed by Tadao Ando and was sited beautifully within the park. The building is only one story above ground but it burrows into the land another level, creating a subtle but solid presence on the landscape. The inaugural exhibit was on Tadao Ando, showing his entire process of designing the museum, including napkin sketches, a myriad of scale models, copious blueprints, and a full-scale mockup of a wall. It presented an amazing insight into the mind of a master builder. To non-architects, the surgical technique employed in building this structure may not be readily apparent. If you have the chance, try running your fingers on the surface of the concrete walls. To create concrete as smooth and flawless as a baby’s bottom is no ordinary feat. The precise coordination of a building such as this can only be done in a country where everyone — from architect to contractor to laborer — is fastidious and disciplined in their work.

Of course, any museum worth its salt must have a museum store. Out by the park, there were two space-age-looking Nissan vehicles that sold museum merchandise and snacks. On sale were limited-edition shirts and some cool objects by the industrial designer Naoto Fukusawa.

Nearby, the Suntory Art Museum exhibits beautiful examples of Japanese paintings, ceramics and lacquerware from the last millennium. The Fuji Xerox Art Space is a jewel box of a museum located within the mall. It showcases prints from the company’s art collection, including such luminaries as Robert Rauschenberg, Brice Marden, and Andy Warhol.

Walking around the Galleria was a highly pleasurable experience. It’s not too massive — only four floors of shops and restaurants — but the design and retail mix is on a whole new level. Tokyo’s retail landscape is quite probably the most sophisticated in the world. There is almost nothing you cannot buy and Tokyo’s shoppers set the pace for trends throughout Asia and the world. And so, creating a new shopping center to impress jaded Tokyoites was no easy task. Although from the looks of the shoppers on opening week, it seems that the Galleria delivers. First off, there are no big brand boutiques. No Chanel/Gucci/Louis Vuitton/Prada megastores that you find in every luxury mall, from Singapore to Dubai to Berlin. There was a Chloé boutique whose entire glass facade was a translucent milky white, allowing one to glimpse only the silhouettes of people and merchandise within the store — highly mysterious and captivating, although I never ventured in.

Other highlights were Beams House, a superbly edited mini-department store with the finest clothing and accessories from around the world. Restir, a department store, had its own gallery exhibiting couture Chanel. The general ambiance of the Galleria is that of understated elegance. The colors are muted, the lighting soft, the acoustics serene. Coupled with the incredibly stylish citizens and the incredibly well-edited merchandise on offer, it was almost too much sophistication to bear. So I ventured down to the food hall at the lower level. A profusion of food outlets was on offer, from specialty tofu stores to tonkatsu vendors to a full-on Dean & Deluca.

One particular shop that caught my eye was called Sunfruits. Here was a boutique, not unlike a Prada store, but instead of leather goods and clothing they were selling fruits — the most beautiful and expensive fruits I have ever seen. There was a pear for 75 dollars, a melon for 200 dollars. Can you imagine? Three melons would be the equivalent of airfare to Japan and back. The even stranger thing was that the store was packed with shoppers and fruits were flying off the shelves. I escaped the fruit madness, stepped into a 7-Eleven to get a drink, and found the most elegant convenience store I will probably ever visit. The facade was clad with slatted wooden shutters and the store was better lit than my own living room. It just never ended.

An even further dimension at the Galleria were the services on offer. While most malls have a primary focus on goods, with a spa or two thrown in as an afterthought, Tokyo Midtown raised the bar yet again. Yes, there is an amazing lineup of beauty and health services as part of the Shu Sanctuary. But add to that Dogdays, a pet (yes, you read right) delicatessen, salon and spa to ensure your pooch is as well coiffed as you are. Finally, there is also a flower shop by none other than the Parisian master Christian Tortu.

As a whole, it’s hard to top what the developers of Tokyo Midtown have created. For other cities who look to this new standard, it’s not simply how far a developer is willing to go, but more what its citizens seek out, and can support. Only in world cities such as Tokyo can you create a truly best-of-the-best type of urban development. It’s hard to imagine a complex as sophisticated this coming up in Beijing at this point. Even if the Chinese are hemorrhaging cash by the container load, it still has a ways to go to reach the Tokyo cognoscenti’s sense of refinement.

Tokyo Midtown is a another testament to Japan’s reemergence from its economic doldrums. After a decade of recession, it’s apparent that their sun is rising once again. With domestic consumption and GDP steadily rising, it won’t be long before Japan is back in business. Who knows what new temples of consumption are on the drawing boards? For now, bust out those credit cards and unleash them on Midtown.