Accommodations in Tokyo range from “capsule hotels,” with rooms no bigger than a coffin, to suites in international luxury brands. Hotels are scattered throughout central Tokyo, but are concentrated in the Yamanote Line hubs. Amid the current high-rise construction boom, newer hotels are located far above street level.

Famed as the setting of Lost in Translation, the stylishly contemporary Park Hyatt Tokyo (3-7-1-2 Nishi-Shinjuku, 81-3-5322-1234) takes up the top 14 floors of the 52-story Shinjuku Park Tower, also designed by Kenzo Tange, and has excellent night views that are best enjoyed from its exquisite top-floor bar and restaurant, the New York Grill.

Another recent deluxe venue is the Conrad Tokyo (1-9-1 Higashi-Shimbashi, 81-3-6388-8000). Located in Shimbashi, a new clutch of high-rises and media companies, the sophisticated, ultramodern guestrooms here have 10-foot ceilings and 516 square feet of space—absolutely cavernous by Tokyo’s cramped standards. The Conrad begins on the 37th floor of the Tokyo Shiodome Building and makes an arresting counterpoint to the elegant Nakajima Japanese teahouse, which sits on a pond in the neighboring Hamarikyu bayside gardens.

Less luxurious, but starting on street level, is the Hotel New Otani Tokyo (4-1 Kioi-cho, 81-3-3265-1111), which boasts a 10-acre garden originally created 400 years ago for a samurai lord. Within walking distance of the Imperial Palace’s inner moat and gardens, the New Otani is an enormous complex with myriad restaurants and bars and great panoramas from its tower wing.

For old-world Tokyo elegance, try the Imperial Hotel (1-1-1 Uchisaiwai-cho, 81-3-3504-1111), set up at the behest of the imperial family in 1890 and still offering impeccable Japanese service and hospitality. Though it was redesigned in the 1920s by Frank Lloyd Wright, the current building, fronting Hibiya Park and close to the Ginza shopping district, dates to the 1970s and ’80s; the Old Imperial Bar preserves some of Wright’s architectural legacy.

Ritz-Carlton (www.ritzcarlton.com) in March 2007 opened a 248-room hotel in the city's tallest skyscraper. The Ritz-Carlton, Tokyo starts on the 45th floor of the building, which is in the city's new Tokyo Midtown Development in Roppongi. Ritz-Carlton claims that the hotel's guest rooms, starting at 559 square feet, are the largest in Tokyo. Rates start at $467.