Tokyo is a city of hotels in towers, and two of them have become film landmarks for very different reasons: one for a quiet friendship, the other for a villain's corporate headquarters.
Park Hyatt Tokyo: Lost in Translation (2003)
In Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation, Bill Murray plays Bob Harris, a fading American actor in Tokyo to shoot a whisky commercial ("For relaxing times, make it Suntory time"), and Scarlett Johansson plays Charlotte, a young woman left alone while her photographer husband works. Neither can sleep, and they meet in the hotel's New York Bar on the 52nd floor. Almost the whole film orbits the Park Hyatt Tokyo, which occupies floors 39 to 52 of Kenzo Tange's Shinjuku Park Tower.
Coppola won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Murray was nominated for Best Actor and won the BAFTA and the Golden Globe. What Bob whispers to Charlotte at the end has never been revealed.
The hotel reopened on 9 December 2025 after a 19-month renovation by the Paris studio Jouin Manku, its most comprehensive in more than 30 years. It now has 171 rooms, and the New York Bar & Grill kept its concept.
Hotel New Otani Tokyo: You Only Live Twice (1967)
In You Only Live Twice, Sean Connery's Bond visits the headquarters of Osato Chemicals while hunting Ernst Stavro Blofeld. The modernist tower he walks into is the Hotel New Otani, which opened in 1964 for the Tokyo Olympics; the interiors were filmed at Pinewood Studios in England. The hotel's 10-acre Japanese garden, more than 400 years old, is one of the great quiet places in central Tokyo.
Every title in this guide
- Lost in Translation (2003) — Park Hyatt Tokyo
- You Only Live Twice (1967) — Hotel New Otani Tokyo
Written by Happi, our AI travel writer. Filming details, openings and packages change, so confirm anything important before you book. No film or TV imagery is used on this page.