If you read last month’s blog entry, then you’ll know that The Gaijin Ghost is now a married man. When all is said and done, my wife and I will have enjoyed a honeymoon in three stages. The third and final stage will come when we take a trip to Florida next year, so she can meet my parents and sister in person for the first time (having only seen them on Skype or Facetime until now). If all goes well, we should be able to stay in the Sunshine State for about a week and visit Walt Disney World with my family.
The first and second leg of our honeymooning world tour already came this month, however, when we spent a night at the world’s oldest hotel in Yamanashi and spent another night at the Park Hyatt Tokyo, the 5-star luxury hotel where Lost in Translation was filmed.
It’s been almost fifteen years since Lost in Translation first hit theaters in America. I’ve got a piece of /Film criticism coming up on September 12, the anniversary of the movie’s L.A. premiere; but in the meantime, I wanted to share some of our experience here with the hotel made famous by Sofia Coppola’s Oscar-winning film.
Japan has posted a record number of foreign visitors the last five years in a row, and inquiring travelers want to know: is the luxury price tag of a room at this hotel really worth it for the Lost in Translation experience?
The Park Hyatt Tokyo: Is It Worth It?
The short answer is: yes. Granted, you don’t have to stay at the hotel to get a taste of the Lost in Translation experience. If all you care about is the hotel’s connection to the movie, it might even be something of a waste to fork over upwards of five hundred dollars, just for a room there.
Earlier this year, I had an article go up on GaijinPot offering a Lost in Translation tour of Tokyo. That article covered everything short of the rooming adventure, which I’m assuming would be a once-in-a-lifetime thing for most readers unless they have deep pockets. Long story short, there are other things you can do if you want to retrace the steps of Bob and Charlotte, the star-crossed lovers played by Bill Murray and Scarlet Johansson in the movie.
Like many tourists, I visited the ritzy New York Bar (where Bob and Charlotte met) when I first came to Japan. I had no idea, then, that “American expat” would become such a permanent state for me, turning my life into a protracted version of the movie.
As noted in this photo gallery, where you can see many more pictures of the Park Hyatt Tokyo, the hotel occupies the upper 14 floors of the 52-story Shinjuku Park Tower. In 2016, I actually taught a seven-week course at a company in the same building. Since I was going there once a week, it was all too easy for me to stop off at the Peak Lounge, for example, and grab a light dinner there before heading home.
Living not far from Shinjuku and having walked through the hotel numerous times, I had formed sort of a “Been there, done that” mentality about the place. Being hotel guests, however, allowed me and my wife to access some exclusive areas of the Park Hyatt Tokyo, like its skylit, 47th-floor pool and gym. We worked out in the same place where Bob gets stuck on the runaway cross-trainer in the movie.
Our room had a view of the Meiji Shrine. From it, we could also see the new Olympic stadium under construction. The food at restaurants like Girandole and the New York Grill was delicious, too.
The only disappointing thing was that they almost forgot to bring out our complimentary honeymoon dessert at the New York Grill. I had asked ahead about that and I thought it was all taken care of, but the waiter seemed to have no knowledge of it at mealtime. Considering how expensive our dinner was (altogether, I probably dropped a cool thousand bucks on this one-night hotel stay), I would have thought it would be the kind of place where they would anticipate the guest’s needs, providing you with service before you even asked for it. But in this instance, that wasn’t the case.
The dessert was supposed to be a surprise for my wife and when it became clear that it wasn’t coming, it led to an awkward little exchange with our waiter. This was just one hiccup in an otherwise enjoyable stay. I only share it in the interest of full disclosure, so that other people can know both the good and the bad if they’re thinking about booking a reservation.
That moment aside, I was pretty amazed, even as a local, by how much of a refreshing escape our night at the hotel turned out to be. The Park Hyatt Tokyo offers much more than the novelty of a real-life movie location. It gives the guest a feeling of being transported into a pocket of luxury high above the city.
The New York Bar, which is adjacent to the New York Grill, really only skims the surface of it. In fact, when we popped in there for a drink after being deep in the hotel, it almost changed my view of the place because there were more tourists on the bar side and the atmosphere was less intimate.
My wife is not a big Lost in Translation fan, but even for her, spending a night at the Park Hyatt Tokyo was such a wonderful experience that after we checked out and were leaving on the shuttle bus, she was already talking about going back for a second visit.
We might need to cross the Plaza Hotel off our bucket list first. Living Lost in Translation is one thing, but maybe a person hasn’t truly lived the life of a movie-loving traveler until they’ve retraced Kevin McCallister’s steps in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. Just saying.
