New England has its fall foliage, Holland its tulips and Provence its lavender, but none can compare to the cherry blossoms that open every spring along Tokyo’s avenues and waterways.
Blossoming Tokyo, launched to coincide with spring in Japan, introduces guests at the Palace Hotel Tokyo to the beauty of sakura (cherry blossoms). During peak bloom, guests will be privately chauffeured about the city in a luxury automobile for a three-hour tour of the city’s best sakura viewing spots. And after peak season, the tour can be tailored entirely to wherever they would like to go in Tokyo – whether it be Ginza for a shopping spree or Aoyama and Omotesando for an art and architectural tour.
During March and April, the package also features a sakura season Hanami bento box lunch tasting for two at the hotel’s signature Japanese outpost Wadakura while in May, a spring seasonal bento set will be prepared for Blossoming Tokyo guests.
The hotel’s signature 1-1-1 sake by Hakkaisan, produced exclusively for Palace Hotel Tokyo, is also included, along with a take-home gift by Nousaku, Japanese purveyors of artisanal metal works based on a centuries-old legacy of melding traditional techniques with modern day innovations.
At an additional charge, the hotel’s concierge team can also arrange the company of a photographer to shoots guests among the blooms (and dressed in traditional kimono, if they’re so inclined) and at their favorite sights, a lesson in ikebana (the Japanese art of arranging flowers), or a workshop on mochi-making – whereby guests can try their hand at pounding rice to produce the fleeting spring treat of sakura mochi.
Blossoming Tokyo is one in a series of seasonal offerings rolled out over the last year to celebrate the hotel’s five-year anniversary in 2017 and to highlight the hotel’s five core values – symbolically reflected as gems in the hotel’s crown logo. The new package was designed to reflect the hotel’s commitment to ‘harmony with nature’. The two-night package will be available from 1 March – 31 May 2017.
