Who needs new? 16 years on, this is still one of Asia’s best hotels

When arriving somewhere at a late hour after a long flight from Australia, a transfer is always welcome. The car that awaits at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport to ferry me to The Peninsula Tokyo is not the high-end hotel company’s usual Rolls Royce, but a Toyota Century. This is a Japan-only luxury limo, revered by auto geeks and favoured by the emperor himself – and it nonchalantly features lace curtains that come as standard.

In a world getting more homogenised, one of the greatest thrills in travelling is stumbling upon uniquely local details: case in point, that car and those curtains.

So when the car drops me off at the Peninsula Tokyo, I have to admit to being a tad underwhelmed, especially when you consider Tokyo’s superabundance of new hotels. In 2020 alone, an incredible 80 opened and more continue to debut (thanks to the 2020/2021 Olympic Games that ended up having no international spectators, and hence, none to stay in said hotels).

In a world that loves the new, the Peninsula Tokyo has not changed decor-wise in the 16 years it’s been in operation. The hotel doesn’t look dated, but it is not trendy.

Over the next couple of days and nights, however, it soon becomes clear. The enduring allure of the celebrity fancied five-star lies not in surface things (though those surfaces are certainly expensive, impeccably neat, impossibly shiny and kept like new) but in the impressive details, of which there are a mind-boggling many.

Size, especially in a country renowned for tiny lodgings, is the most obvious of those. The 314 rooms start at 54 square metres. Also obvious; the location. In a purpose-built standalone building (often newer hotels share space in multi-purpose towers), The Peninsula Tokyo is in the Marunouchi district, with many windows affording direct views of the Imperial Palace and Hibiya Park. Ginza is a short walk away and it takes two minutes to stroll to the nearest train stop.

There are the quirky things: the fingernail dryer in the dressing room (every room and suite has one of these spaces); the button that turns the bathroom into spa mode, dimming the lights and cueing tinkly relaxation music; the beautiful cotton kimonos awaiting in a drawer; the two-way cupboard where things like laundry are left and picked up without disturbance.

The thoughtful details include mini tubes of hand sanitiser in a drawer; a portable Wi-Fi unit for guest use while in town; printer-scanner-fax machines in every room and – this one gets me good – a cute, tiny stapler included in the stationery drawer.