House of style

The newly open Marunouchi Building is drawing legions of eager shoppers from all over Japan. Martin Webb fights through the crowds to report.

Last month, Tokyo's newest temple to capitalism flung open its doors to the masses. The Marunouchi Building, popularly known as Maru Biru, is the concrete manifestation of corporate giant Mitsubishi Holdings' approach to 21st-century Japan. Billed as an ultra-modern, multipurpose space, the 37-story, 180-meter skyscraper houses 140 cafés, restaurants and shops, as well as offices, conference halls, academic suites, event venues and gardens.

In homage to the previous Maruonuchi Building-an eight-story structure built in 1922 as Tokyo's first modern office building-the architects preserved parts of the original architecture and added to the already impressive earthquake-proof design. They also created a layer of vegetation over the roof of the lower floors to combat the urban heat-island effect. In just one month, Maru Biru has seen a host of art, music and design events draw hordes of shoppers from all over Japan into the complex, injecting some much needed vitality into this once sedate and gray business district.

From the ground up
The rush starts down in the basement-level food court, home to a host of tempting treats. San Francisco Italian dessert store C3 and Belgian chocolatier Debailleul vie for customers with healthier rivals like Bagel K, Ying Kee Tea House and focaccia specialist Garbagnati. Apart from mouthwatering luxuries, essential services like a post office, bank, copy center, florist and photo lab are here alongside gift stores and a handful of boutiques. Also on hand is age-old expatriate favorite the American Pharmacy, where slimming tablets are available to help you lose the pounds gained at the food court.

The sleek 37-story Maru Biru is changing the face of Marunouchi

In the cavernous ground-level Maru Cube section, shoppers can watch themselves on monitors mounted in silver, tear-shaped sculptures suspended from the ceiling. Next door to busy eatery-cum-event space Café Ease is artistic accessory specialist H.P. Bijoux. The giant alien teddy bears in the window display should prepare you for the wild and wonderful interior goods, bags and jewelry on offer inside the gallery-like store. Super-trendy boutique Beams gets the biggest space on the floor. The fashion buyers from this store are world-renowned for their expert eye, so be sure to take a look. Adding a touch of business savvy to the space is financial media giant Bloomberg's interactive gallery and showroom space.

Second-floor highlights include sharp shoe store Grappe Bannister and ultra-cool ladies' boutique Aquagirl, but the biggest draw has to be The Conran Shop, which in fact spills up onto the third floor. "Plain," "simple" and "useful" are interior design mogul Terence Conran's watchwords, and the home furnishings and accessories here meet these prerequisites with miles of style to spare. More fashion names on the third floor include Theory, United Arrows, Anteprima and Yoshida Kaban. Lingerie, plants, spectacles, gifts, bags and a hair salon are among the 19 outlets on the fourth and final retail floor. For those looking for more cerebral fare, Yamano Music offers a wealth of CDs and DVDs while Maruzen stocks thousands of Japanese books and magazines, plus a handful of foreign titles.

Style meets substance
For shoppers who are done with their well-deserved sprees and feeling peckish, the only way is up. Foreign fare from California, Hawaii, France, Italy and Vietnam is available on the fifth floor. An impressive array of Far Eastern cuisine-everything from tofu to tonkatsu, and sushi to sumibiyaki-takes pride of place on the sixth floor. More formal affairs-requiring a reservation, sartorial preparation and plenty of cash-take place on the 35th and 36th floors, which command a magisterial view of the metropolis. (The same view forced the Imperial Agency to re-landscape the palace gardens to shield the royal family from the prying eyes of diners and the 4,000 Mitsubishi employees based in the office section of the building.)

Checking out the latest styles at the third-floor Pool Side

Mitsubishi Holdings reports that the number of visitors to the building has exceeded all expectations, with an excess of 1 million making the trip in the opening month. Embattled shoppers and staff testify to the fact that the building is a little too popular, but after one visit the reasons are clear: Maru Biru offers an unrivaled day out for sophisticated city dwellers.

Shops open 11am-9pm Mon-Sat, 11am-8pm Sun and hols; restaurants open 11am-11pm Mon-Sat, 11am-10pm Sun and hols. 2-4-1 Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku. Tel: 03-5218-5100. Nearest stn: Tokyo. www.marubiru.jp

Photo credit: Courtesy of Marubiru, Tama Miyake

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