Tokyo's Hotel Okura Closes for Demolition

When the Imperial Hotel, one of Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpieces, was demolished people lamented over the loss of cultural values attached to it and many a noted celebrity lost their sweet homes. 

Now, Hotel Okura has faded into the past; regular customers spent their last minute in the hotel attending a concert and browsing in the richly Japanesque Lobby. 

The hotel opened  in 1962 in time for the Tokyo Olympics two years afterwards, with the 408-room Main Wing with and an annex, South Wing, with 388 rooms lodging reporters and logistics aides. 

Hotel Okura has been the stage of international summits and lodged by numerous foreign heads of state, including US presidents since Richard Nixon. The hotel is conveniently situated near the US Embassy.

Among the foreign celebrities who enjoyed the iconic charms of Hotel Okura include their majesties Price Charles and Princess Diana, John Lennon, Madonna, and many more.

The memorial concert on August 31 evening was attended by nearly 500 regular customers. Yaeko Nozaki, 73, who had her wedding ceremony in the hotel  laments her favorite "Japanesque Lobby" has to go, but looks forward to a new hotel due in 2019.

So, the hotel's Main Wing closed on August 2015 but the South Tower will operate. $980 million is budgeted to construct a new wing in 2019 in the eve of the Tokyo Olympics 2020, just as the original was put up in time for the last Olympics. The new main wing promises to be a mixed-use tower with 550 rooms for lodging and 18 stories of office space.

The closing episode will have to be one extraordinary restaurant menu so many people talk about in retrospect. No steak dinner, nor Washoku plate - it's French Toast. Crispy outside but pudding-fluffy inside. The desk crosses his fingers in hopes of finding it in the new hotel's restaurant menu.