A visit to Grosvenor’s deluxe apartments in Tokyo takes our correspondent down memory lane
TWO WEEKS AFTER I graduated from college in 1977, I got on a plane to take a job at the Asahi Evening News in Tokyo. Within nine months I was appointed sports editor, which spoke much about the Asahi Evening News and little about me. I know nothing about sports.
On arrival in Tokyo, a real estate agent found me an apartment that was the smallest human habitation I had ever imagined: one six-tatami-mat room, a dining-kitchen space and a bathroom molded out of a single piece of beige plastic. (Very easy to hose down.) Whole families lived in these “1DKs,” as they are known, in ice cube tray apartment buildings called, rather cruelly, “mansions.” The day I moved in with two vinyl suitcases and the Olivetti portable typewriter I received as a graduation present, a tarantula (or something like it) was in the middle of the main wall.
An alien country, a steel front door that clanged shut like a dog kennel’s, spider on the wall: I felt like I had landed in Alcatraz.
But when I told my mentor, then-Newsweek bureau chief Bernie Krisher, what I had found and how much I was paying (¥140,000 or US$514), he said: “Well, I guess it’s okay to splurge a little.”
The splurge was choosing an apartment right next to Yoyogi Park, one of Tokyo’s largest, home of the noble Meiji shrine, the 1964 Olympic stadiums and hip, weekend carnivals. I remember Yoyogi Park as nothing but trees, hills, and wide, empty lanes of black asphalt – a kind of Japanese austerity that contrasted nicely to the higgledy-piggledy residential areas surrounding it.
But like all of Tokyo, the park had changed over the years. Before World War II, it was an imperial army parade ground. In the post-war US occupation of Japan, American soldiers lived in a gated community inside the park called Washington Heights (according to an essay on the Web by Albert O Nakazawa) where steak dinners cost $2, cocktails went for a quarter and domestic help was freely available. By the time I got to Tokyo, Washington Heights was just an odd memory.
Yet until a few years ago, a few office buildings used by General Douglas MacArthur’s staff stood vacant inside the edge of the park. The Tokyo government put them up for tender in 2005, and a consortium of two Japanese companies and British developer Grosvenor Ltd bought the site. After two years of construction, they are now renting 45 units in what may be one of the choicest living locations in Tokyo.
Except for the Imperial family, almost no one in Tokyo lives inside a park. Residents of Grosvenor Place Kamizono-cho are the others.
“The point about this location is that the environment around it is fantastic. It’s about discrete luxury,” says Nicholas J Loup, the chief executive of Grosvenor Ltd.
“The people we’re targeting for tenants are high net worth individuals or successful younger entrepreneurs. We have one celebrity already signed up.”
Tenants want to be low profile, Loup says, so the five-storey buildings are set back from the road and entered through a discrete driveway reminiscent of a hotel’s. The lobby is long and deluxe with fireplaces. Each tenant shares an elevator with only one other neighbor.
Out of 45 units, architect Paul Davis has used 36 different layouts. The smallest flat is 150sq m. The largest, 360sq m, are on the top floor and the measurement doesn’t count rooftop decks, eight of which are equipped with Jacuzzis. All of the ceilings are an impressive 2.6m high, and each apartment comes with a parking space and a 9sq m “trunk room.” Some flats have two parking spaces.
From the pictures I’ve seen of the Imperial Palace, I think I’d prefer living in the Grosvenor. The interiors are understated in a way that seems very Japanese, with white walls, bleached oak floors, a granite kitchen island and enormous windows offering tranquil views of the park.
“From the outset, our starting point was understatement,” says Davis. “I have a problem with celebrity architects. Have you been to Dubai? You go down the main street and it’s every ego shouting at each other. We could have done a shiny building, which, frankly, would have been rude to the park.”
Davis is particularly scathing about flashy architecture that sacrifices space. “Form follows function: that’s particularly true with residential buildings,” he says. “Our job is providing the backdrop for people to live.”
That includes some very cool bathrooms with glassed-in tub and shower rooms, and toilet seats that raise themselves automatically when you approach (which could startle the houseguests). Grosvenor’s asking rents: ¥1.35 million ($14,550) to ¥3.5 million monthly.
Leaving Grosvenor Place Kamizono-cho, I crossed the street to return to my neighborhood of 30 years ago to see what still existed – and to test my memory. My “mansion” building was there; brownish-maroon and looking the worse for wear, with security netting covering all the little balconies. (Burglaries must be on the rise.) I was surprised to see a nameplate near the chrome mailboxes reading Yoyogi Park Heights. I have no memory that the building had a name. And it suddenly occurred to me that my flat might have been new when I lived there, and I didn’t know or notice.
I strolled down the shopping street and recognized the barber’s pole, the post office where I paid my rent, the supermarket, and spotted some new additions: Freshness Burger, Café Table Donky [sic]. I passed a funky liquor store in an ancient wooden house that must have been there 30 years ago, but I didn’t recall: it was probably too scary for me to have ever entered.
And I eagerly made my way to the corner where one of my most vivid memories of my first months in Japan resides: in the sushi shop where I discovered the joys of raw fish. Would it still be there? Would the “master” still be serving? His son?
I got to the corner and it wasn’t there. All of the buildings were at least 30 years old, and none – the hairdresser, the narrow office building – could have ever contained a sushi shop. My memory told me I was in the right spot; my eyes told me the opposite.
