Roppongi 六本木

Roppongi had a reputation as Tokyo’s hard-drinking foreigner district long before anyone called it an art hub, and both identities now coexist on the same hill. The Roppongi Hills complex of 2003 and Tokyo Midtown four years later turned a cluster of nightclubs into a planned city of museums, luxury hotels and corporate headquarters, with the Mori Art Museum on the 53rd floor and the Suntory Museum of Art across the road. The National Art Center, a wave of green glass by Kisho Kurokawa, completes the Art Triangle, and a shared ticket discount rewards doing all three in a day.

After six, the crossing under the expressway switches to its older self: shot bars, hip-hop clubs, a surviving Hard Rock Cafe and touts who should be ignored. Rather than fight them, head for the view. Mori Tower’s Sky Deck puts you on the roof, unglazed, with Tokyo Tower lit up a kilometer away, and the quiet lanes of Azabu-Juban below have the neighborhood’s best izakaya and a 400-year-old shopping street. Roppongi is at its best as a late day: museum, sunset, dinner, one bar.