Kyoto Japan

As visits to Kyoto continue to climb, a trend that will only intensify when the Olympics come to Japan this summer, innovative hotels and museums are opening. The Fukuda Art Museum, which focuses largely on Kyoto artists from the Edo period to today, debuted in October, and the Kyocera Museum of Art is slated to reopen this March after a three-year expansion that added contemporary art galleries to supplement the existing 1933 building. The Park Hyatt Kyoto, a hillside retreat that launched last fall, echoes Kyoto’s imperial history and its time-honored aesthetics, including those of the ryokan. The Kengo Kuma–designed Ace Hotel, opening this spring, is inspired by the restored machiya shop-houses that have played a large role in Kyoto’s self-renewal. But the most notable arrival is no doubt that of the new Aman Kyoto. Far from the anonymous urban grids of central Kyoto and the manicured tourist neighborhoods of Gion and Higashiyama, the property sits in a small valley surrounded by forested foothills in the northeastern suburbs. The Aman’s guest pavilions, all minimalist in style and largely made of cedar, are set along a mountain stream. The surrounding garden is landscaped with monumental stone walls and pathways. The onsen is outdoors, surrounded by ornamental boulders, and the guest rooms overlook trees glittering with fireflies; the ofuro tubs in the bathrooms are made of aromatic cypress. The whole effect is one of simplicity and understatement.