Two Days of Art and Literature in Creative Tokyo

As an only child in the late 20th century, I learned early: when the world felt empty, a good book was waiting. From the moment I could read, I devoured books, overusing my library card like a teenager unleashed with their first credit card.

That lesson has followed me ever since. Bookstores are magnets to me, tempting me to pause at the front window and scan the latest arrivals. I used to daydream about living inside a library, surrounded by endless shelves of stories. Apparently, the team at Shiba Park Hotel has been eavesdropping on my imagination.

Shiba Park Hotel: A Night (or More) at the Library

Arriving at the hotel, situated on a side street across from Zojoji Temple and the larger Shiba Park that surrounds it, I passed through a lobby with walls lined with bookcases and hundreds of playful books vying for my attention. Jazzy background music played from a vacuum-tube-amplified sound system, loud enough to be heard over the soft conversations of guests but quiet enough not to disturb the readers. A cheerful staff member checked me in efficiently, noting that I had a kintsugi craft experience the following morning and dinner in the hotel restaurant the following evening, before another staff member helped me with my luggage to the elevator. Upon exiting the elevator, I noted that my floor, like many others, had its own themed library of a few dozen books. The theme of my floor was travel; how appropriate.

The concept of a library-themed hotel is rare and recent. For over seven decades, Shiba Park Hotel was one of several mid-range hotels competing for business in the area east of Shiba Park and Zojoji Temple, but in 2020, Shiba Park Hotel transformed into a book-themed auberge, separating itself from the competition.

There are over 1,500 books available at the hotel, the majority in the extensive collections in the lobby area and the second-floor reading lounge. However, the 6th to 11th floors each have their own small libraries with themes such as architecture, fashion, and photography. Guests are free to read in the public spaces or take the books back to their rooms. My room had a comfortable corner sofa, perfect for curling up with a few good books, which I did until my eyes grew too tired to read, and I drifted off to a peaceful sleep.

The next morning, I enjoyed breakfast at the hotel’s uncrowded restaurant. The breakfast buffet focuses on quality over quantity of selection. Fruits were sweet, vegetables crisp, and many foods came from the regions of Japan they were famous for: tangy Wakayama mikan juice, for example. The staff member who checked me in the day before passed by my table and greeted me with a smile, reminding me of the time and place to meet my host for my morning kintsugi experience.

A Kintsugi Craft Experience at Shiba Park Hotel

After breakfast, hotel staff member Chie Matsuo led me in a private kintsugi experience, the Japanese craft of repairing ceramics with resin infused with gold powder. The authentic kintsugi experience requires many layers of lacquer, each taking several days to cure, so Shiba Park Hotel offers a traveler-friendly version using synthetic lacquer that dries within 24 hours and can be completed in a single session. I chose between three beautifully patterned Kitani-ware coasters that were pre-broken and Matsuo guided me in the steps to repair it: applying adhesive and removing excess adhesive, sanding the surface where the lacquer is applied, and applying the lacquer and bronze powder (the price of gold is astronomical these days, so bronze is a more reasonably priced alternative). The workshop took about an hour, and Matsuo packaged my coaster in a beautiful wooden box to protect it while it cured.

A Literary-Themed Day Exploring Tokyo

With plenty of time left in the day and all of Tokyo to explore, I decided to lean into the library theme of the hotel. My first destination was just a 15-minute subway ride away, an area selected as the world’s coolest neighborhood in 2025, Jimbocho. Jimbocho is Tokyo’s bookstore, a collection of over 100 eclectic shops carrying everything from entire series of 1980s J-pop idol magazines to hand-bound tomes written with calligraphy brushes three centuries ago. Jimbocho is where Tokyo University professors of Edo history and girls in lolita cosplay stand side by side, browsing the books lined up along the sidewalks. While most books are in Japanese, of course, a number of foreign-language bookstores and shops with sections for foreign-language books are located here. You’ll also find vintage magazines, photobooks, and even ukiyo-e woodblock prints (both antique and reprints) for very reasonable prices. If you work up an appetite sifting through the thousands of tomes, Jimbocho is also well-known for its curry shops, with a wide variety of curries that aren’t easily found in other places in the city.

After spending a few hours browsing the shops along the main street of Jimbocho, I found a few ukiyo-e prints I liked, but nothing to read. I decided to head to Ginza, home of Tokyo’s coolest bookstore (at least in my opinion), Ginza Tsutaya Books. This branch of the Tsutaya chain occupies a large portion of the top floor of the Ginza Six shopping mall and claims to be “The World’s Best Art Bookstore.” With over 60,000 art books displayed in a manner that you want to read them all, the exact ranking of the store in the world hardly matters. I picked up the latest copy of my favorite Japanese magazine, & Premium. If a magazine existed that was made to pair perfectly with a cappuccino, this would be the one.

Take a Stroll or Read a Book in Hamarikyu Gardens or Shiba Park

The weather was too inviting to resist, so I returned to Shiba Park Hotel by way of Hamarikyu Gardens. Once the exclusive hunting grounds of the Tokugawa Shogunate, these gardens now offer tranquil saltwater ponds teeming with ocean fish, sculpted pines, and cherry trees that blush pink in spring. Tea houses dot the landscape, once the domain of Edo-era elites savoring the artful scenery. Today, Hamarikyu is the perfect spot to lose yourself in a book, whether lounging in the shade of a veranda or basking on a sunlit bench by the water.

Though I missed it on this trip, Shiba Park nearby is a gem in this corner of Tokyo, wrapping around Zojoji Temple with its deep Tokugawa roots. The park offers sweeping views of Tokyo Tower, and its broad lawns and peaceful wooded trails are ideal for settling in with a good book.

A brief stroll from Hamarikyu, weaving through the gleaming skyscrapers of Shiodome, brought me back to the hotel. After a restful pause, I settled into the restaurant for a quiet dinner. The menu spanned Western, Japanese, and Chinese courses; I chose Chinese, savoring classics like shrimp in chili sauce and Japan’s take on sweet and sour pork. I dined in peaceful solitude, watching the world hurry past outside in the chilly night, before retreating to my room for more reading and closing the day fulfilled by stories, art, and the gentle hush of a city at rest.

Park Hotel Tokyo: A Dynamic Contemporary Art Showcase

If Shiba Park Hotel is the quiet, book-loving older sibling, Park Hotel Tokyo is the bold, creative younger one. Perched on the upper floors of Shiodome Media Tower since 2003, its sweeping city views are rivaled only by the ever-shifting displays of contemporary art.

The hotel features art collections in various sections of the facility, including the 25th-floor lobby and the corridors of most of the floors on which the rooms are located. These collections are changed quarterly, timed with the seasons, which the hotel believes reflects Japan’s spirit of omotenashi hospitality. During my stay, the exhibition titled On the Way in Winter contained works from artists like Hooly and Ayaïro that express “the light of winter, the stillness of time, and the warmth that dwells within.” The lobby also features a window view framing Tokyo Tower and distant Mount Fuji, so on a clear day, you can enjoy a stunning view that rivals the artwork while enjoying complimentary coffee and tea.

Each hallway doubles as an art gallery, with exhibits refreshed every season. This transforms Park Hotel Tokyo into one of the city’s largest, most dynamic galleries, where nearly every piece is on sale. The secret behind these ever-evolving displays is the hotel’s art director, whose network spans dozens of galleries across Japan.

Park Hotel Tokyo’s Distinctive “Artist in Hotel” Guestrooms

However, the hotel’s dedication to the work of contemporary artists doesn’t stop at the hotel’s public spaces. Unique and immersive artwork is also kept behind the hotel’s locked doors, the guestrooms, to be precise. The “Artist in Hotel” project has been running since 2012, with local artists invited to present a vision of Japanese culture. Fifty-one of the hotel’s 268 rooms have been turned into three-dimensional canvases so far, with a newly created art room added every two to three months. My room was Otafuku, a work by Aki Kondo featuring a very large face of Otafuku, a jovial symbol of good fortune and happiness. To be completely honest, the face was a bit unnerving in the dark, but the rest of the walls, covered with cheerful plants and flowers created with thick textures of paint, were a sight to behold as the late afternoon sky cast a warm glow over the room. This room shares a similar view to the lobby, so I was treated to an incredible view of the city and iconic Fuji-san throughout the day.

An Art-Themed Day in Tokyo

Of course, I didn’t spend the whole day indoors. Inspired by the hotel’s creative energy, I set out to explore some of Tokyo’s top art destinations. Thanks to the hotel’s prime spot in Shiodomen (just south of the glitzy Ginza district and easily reached from both of Tokyo’s international airports) getting around the city was a breeze.

First up was the outstanding Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, curiously abbreviated to the acronym MOT. The MOT is about 30 minutes from the hotel via a short ride on the Oedo Line and then a brisk walk to Kiba Park. Although there are two large contemporary art museums in Tokyo, the other being the National Museum of Modern Art near the Imperial Palace, this is my favorite of the two. The bright and spacious exhibit halls host a permanent exhibition with works chosen from over 6,000 pieces of art, while six to eight temporary exhibitions are held each year that range from extreme cutting-edge artworks to collections of well-established contemporary artists from around the world.

Tennozu Isle is a warehouse district that has transformed over the years into a hotbed for artists, with many formerly unused warehouses converted into huge galleries for art exhibitions and fairs. The WHAT Museum (Warehouse of Art Terrada) is one of those spaces, a facility where artists can display and store large-scale art pieces, which WHAT helps curate. WHAT houses a sizable collection of architectural models, stored at the facility by architects and design firms, many of which are available for the public to view. In other spaces, the museum holds temporary exhibitions focusing mainly on three-dimensional art, often large-scale pieces that are difficult to display in smaller galleries. In my opinion, the art at WHAT is often avant-garde and may leave you scratching your head. But that’s all part of the plan, say the museum’s curators, and art is always subjective in nature, and not everything can appeal to everyone.

If visiting museums stimulates your creativity, a visit to one of Tokyo’s most aesthetically pleasing art supply shops is in order, and fortunately, that shop is next door to the WHAT Museum. Pigment is a shop that carries, well, pigments that can be used to create nearly any color imaginable. The pigments are displayed in their full array along one of the shop’s walls in one of the most breathtaking displays of color I have ever seen. Surprisingly, the price of the pigments, derived from natural minerals, varies widely based on the rarity of the color in nature. Pigment also carries brushes, papers, and even pure gold foil and other materials for the more esoteric forms of art. Even if you are just window shopping, it’s worth your time to wander the Kengo Kuma-designed shop and admire its beautiful displays and products.

Returning to the hotel, I took a leisurely stroll through the corridors of each floor, enjoying the hotel as a captivating art gallery. Many of the pieces had roots in traditional Japan: materials like handmade washi paper or motifs from classical works and Japanese mythology were all well represented. But some pieces were surprising, with cute, anime-like characters hidden in elegant designs. It’s no wonder so many artists around the world continue to look to Japan for inspiration, just as Monet and Van Gogh did over a century ago.

Feeding Your Creative Soul in Central Tokyo

Both Shiba Park Hotel and Park Hotel Tokyo are located in a central part of Tokyo, but not an area well-known by most overseas visitors. The Hamamatsucho and Shiodome areas are better known as business districts than for tourist attractions, but both hotels are within a few minutes of major Tokyo tourist areas and attractions by subway and train.

Both hotels have built a solid international audience, with 95% of their guests coming from overseas. I would credit the hotels for recruiting a welcoming staff who are English-fluent, focused on amenities that meet the needs of overseas visitors, and a great value for guests seeking moderately priced four-star accommodation.

Moreover, I found both hotels to be a welcome change of pace from the excess of generic mid-range hotels popping up around the city. At the end of the day, I felt myself looking forward to returning to the hotel, not simply to rest, but to recharge my creativity. I consumed new books like candy at Shiba Park Hotel, and connected ideas for new photographs and writings through the art displayed in the hallways of Park Hotel Tokyo. While vacations are for resting, I found myself anxious to get back to the work of creating.

Returning home, I hung my ukiyo-e print on my office wall and slipped my new magazine onto my bookshelf, small reminders of my little jaunt into the heart of one of the world’s most creative cities. While these trinkets may be forgotten in a few weeks or months, the spark of creativity inspired by my stay at Shiba Park Hotel and Park Hotel Tokyo will continue to burn within me.