The 20 best luxury hotels in Kyoto for 2026

Twenty six pavilions in a moss forest that nobody built, twenty minutes and a whole world from Gion.

The land Aman Kyoto sits on was bought decades ago by a textile collector who intended to build a museum, laid out the paths and the stone steps, and then never built anything. The forest closed over the work. When Aman found the site the moss had been growing on those stones for forty years, which is why the grounds here feel discovered rather than designed. No landscaping budget buys that.

You arrive through a long approach of cedars and the city stops existing. The twenty six rooms and villas are spread so far apart that at full occupancy you can walk to dinner and meet nobody. Rooms are quiet dark timber, tatami platforms, deep tubs, and windows treated as picture frames pointed at trees. The onsen draws mineral water from a hot spring source on the property, and the indoor bathing pavilion in November, with maples on three sides, is the single best twenty minutes of luxury hotel time I know in Japan.

Two Michelin Keys, and it earns them without a spa menu the length of a novel or a single celebrity chef. Taka an, the restaurant, cooks a Kyoto kaiseki that is confident enough to be simple. Breakfast comes as a lacquered box of small dishes that changes with the week rather than the season.

Understand what you are choosing. This is the northern edge of the city, above Kinkakuji, and a taxi to Gion runs twenty five to thirty five minutes depending on traffic. Guests who came to see fourteen temples in three days resent that transfer. Guests who came for the forest treat the city as an optional day trip and leave happier than anyone else in Kyoto.

The verdict

• Worth it for
• Two Michelin Keys and the most genuinely private grounds in Kyoto
• Mineral onsen drawn from a spring on the property itself
• Kinkakuji, Ryoanji and Ninnaji are all within a short drive or a long walk
• The honest drawback
• Twenty five to thirty five minutes by taxi from Gion, and that adds up fast on a temple heavy itinerary

Three Michelin Keys, a 300 year family estate gate, and a thermal spring spa in the middle of the city.

The Mitsui family held this plot opposite Nijo Castle for roughly two and a half centuries, and the Kajiimiya gate you walk under to check in has been standing since the seventeenth century. That single detail sets the tone for the whole property. This is the only hotel in Kyoto where the historical claim is structural rather than decorative.

Three Michelin Keys makes it the most decorated hotel in the city, and unusually the reason is not the rooms but the completeness. There is a genuine thermal hot spring drawn from beneath the site and piped into the spa and into fourteen suites, which no other central Kyoto hotel can offer. There is a central garden with a pond, a tea pavilion, a Toki restaurant doing precise modern Japanese, and a bar that does not empty at half past nine.

The design work is by the studio that understands Kyoto light better than anyone: deep eaves, layered screens, a garden visible from almost every public seat. Ninety eight rooms is a real hotel rather than a boutique, so you get a proper gym, a proper pool and an all day operation, and the service still holds together.

The compromise is geography. Nijo is the working centre of Kyoto, well served by the Tozai subway line and excellent for Nishiki Market and the Imperial Palace, but it is not walkable to Gion or the Higashiyama temple run. Budget for taxis or learn the subway on day one.

The verdict

• Worth it for
• Three Michelin Keys, the highest rating awarded to any hotel in Kyoto
• Real thermal spring water in the spa and in fourteen of the suites
• Central for the subway, Nijo Castle and Nishiki Market
• The honest drawback
• Nijo is not walking distance to Gion or Higashiyama, so temple days start with a taxi

Eleven generations, eighteen rooms, no reception desk and the highest guest scores of any address in Japan.

Tawaraya has been taking guests since 1709. Not a restoration of a building from 1709, an unbroken business run by the same family for eleven generations, and the single most quietly self assured place I have ever stayed. There is no lobby. You are met at the door, your shoes are taken, and you are walked to your room, and from that point the hotel arranges itself around you rather than the reverse.

Eighteen rooms sit around interior courtyard gardens. Yours has a cypress soaking tub, a low writing desk facing the moss, an alcove with one seasonal flower and one scroll, and futon bedding laid out while you are at dinner. Kaiseki is served in the room, course by course, by someone who knows exactly when you put your chopsticks down. Breakfast is grilled fish, rice, pickles, tofu and broth, and it will spoil hotel breakfasts for you for a while.

Bookings open roughly six months out and the spring and autumn weeks go immediately. There is no gym, no pool, no spa, no restaurant you can walk into, no shop, and the front door is not staffed at three in the morning in the way a Ritz-Carlton door is. That is the trade. What you get instead is the reference experience against which everything else in this guide is measured, and guests who have done both usually say the ryokan night was the one they still talk about a year later.

The verdict

• Worth it for
• The highest rated address in Kyoto and two Michelin Keys
• In room kaiseki dinner and a cypress bath in every room
• Central Nakagyo location, ten minutes on foot from Nishiki Market
• The honest drawback
• Futon bedding on tatami, no pool, no gym and no walk in restaurant, which does not suit everybody

The best located luxury hotel in the city. Ninenzaka at the front door and the Yasaka Pagoda from the window.

Park Hyatt Kyoto sits on the grounds of Kyoyamoto, a ryotei restaurant that has fed people on this slope since 1877, and the hotel has the good sense to treat that as the point. Seventy rooms and nine suites, timber and washi and stone, laid out along the hill so that the corridors are all glass and garden.

Location is why I would book it over anything else in this tier. Step out of the door and you are on the stone lane that climbs to Kiyomizudera. The Yasaka Pagoda stands in the window of the upper rooms and in the window of Yasaka, the rooftop teppanyaki room, framed exactly as it is in every photograph of Kyoto you have ever seen. At six in the morning that lane is empty and you have one of the most famous streets in Asia to yourself, which is worth more than any spa.

Kyoto Bistro does an unfussy Franco Japanese thing and the ryotei next door will cook you a proper kaiseki. Service is Park Hyatt at its best: attentive, dry, no theatre. It is also a World of Hyatt property, which makes it the best points redemption in Kyoto by a distance.

Rooms are not large by the standards of the Ritz-Carlton or the Four Seasons, and there is no outdoor pool at all. If you are travelling with children who need to swim, book elsewhere and come here for dinner.

The verdict

• Worth it for
• The best position of any luxury hotel in Kyoto, on the Higashiyama slope
• Yasaka Pagoda views from upper rooms and the rooftop restaurant
• Bookable with World of Hyatt points at genuinely good value
• The honest drawback
• No pool and a modest spa, and the entry rooms are small for the money

River frontage on the Kamo at Nijo, the best breakfast in the city and the easiest walk to everything.

The Ritz-Carlton opened in 2014 as the first international luxury hotel Kyoto had, and a decade of competition has not dislodged it from the position it took immediately: the most useful great hotel in the city. It faces the Kamo river, which in Kyoto is the equivalent of facing the park in New York, and it puts you within a fifteen minute walk of Pontocho, Gion, Nishiki Market and two subway lines.

Inside, it is more Kyoto than the brand elsewhere: 134 rooms with tatami corners, indigo textiles, real ceramics, and a garden of maples and water that runs through the building. Mizuki holds a Michelin star across four counters, and the sushi counter in particular is worth booking before you arrive. The spa is the most complete in central Kyoto and the pool is a proper twenty metres, indoors.

Breakfast deserves its own paragraph. The Japanese set here is the best hotel breakfast I have eaten in Japan and one of the best anywhere: a lacquer tray of eight or nine small dishes, grilled fish, tofu made that morning, and rice cooked in a donabe brought to the table.

It is the largest property in this top tier and it feels it in high season, particularly at breakfast and around the lifts. If your priority is silence rather than convenience, go north to Aman or ROKU.

The verdict

• Worth it for
• The most convenient address in Kyoto for walking and for subway lines
• Michelin starred Mizuki and the best hotel breakfast in Japan
• Twenty metre indoor pool and the most complete central spa
• The honest drawback
• At 134 rooms it is the busiest hotel in this tier and the public areas feel it in April and November

Reached only by private boat up the Oi river, into a hundred year old riverside estate with no road access.

You check in at a small office by Togetsukyo bridge in Arashiyama, and then a boat takes you fifteen minutes upstream through the Hozu gorge to a property with no road to it. Arriving at HOSHINOYA Kyoto is the best arrival in Japanese hospitality and it is not close.

The estate was a Kyoto merchant's riverside retreat a century ago. Twenty five rooms are strung along the water in low timber buildings, and the sound in every one of them is the river rather than traffic. Rooms are lacquer, cedar, paper screens and a low table at the window; the best of them, the riverside suites, put you close enough to the water that mist comes into the room in October.

The programming is unusually good and quite serious: incense appreciation, a morning Zen session across the water at a temple, koto performances in the evening pavilion. Dinner is a kaiseki that leans hard on Kyoto vegetables and river fish and is served in a dining room facing the gorge.

The boat is also the drawback. Sailings stop in the evening, so a late night in Gion means a taxi to the far bank and a walk, and in heavy rain the schedule bends. Treat this as two nights of retreat rather than a base for city sightseeing.

The verdict

• Worth it for
• Private boat arrival and no road access at all, which nothing else in Kyoto offers
• Twenty five riverside rooms in a genuine hundred year old estate
• Cultural programming that is properly researched rather than decorative
• The honest drawback
• The boat stops in the evening, so late dinners in the city become an awkward taxi and a walk

The best wellness operation in the city, wrapped in Heian period design and priced below its rivals.

Six Senses arrived in Kyoto in 2023 and did the sensible thing, which was to stop pretending to be a ryokan and instead build the thing Kyoto genuinely lacked: a modern wellness hotel with a serious spa in walking distance of the temples. Eighty one rooms in the Higashiyama foothills, ten minutes on foot to Kiyomizudera through the back lanes.

The design reaches back to the Heian court rather than to Edo tea houses, so expect colour, pattern and a certain amount of playfulness where other Kyoto hotels go monastic. The Alchemy Bar has you blending your own scrubs, the Earth Lab explains what the hotel does with its waste and water in a way that is oddly compelling, and the spa runs proper multi day programmes with a physiologist rather than a menu of massages.

Sekki, the restaurant, cooks to the twenty four micro seasons of the Japanese calendar and does it well. There is a heated indoor pool, a decent gym and a family friendliness that most Kyoto luxury hotels quietly lack.

It is the least traditionally Kyoto hotel in this top tier, and readers who came for tatami and cedar sometimes find the wellness framing too structured. If you want quiet reverence, look at Aman or Tawaraya instead.

The verdict

• Worth it for
• The most serious wellness and spa programme of any Kyoto hotel
• Ten minutes on foot from Kiyomizudera through quiet lanes
• Genuinely good with children, which is rare at this level in Kyoto
• The honest drawback
• The design and the wellness framing feel international rather than Kyoto, which disappoints some guests

Nine machiya townhouses knitted into one hotel in the geisha quarter, with the best personal service in Kyoto.

Capella took nine traditional machiya on a Miyagawacho lane and made them a single hotel of around fifty rooms without flattening the buildings into a corridor. You walk between wings through small courtyards, and the geisha district goes about its evening on the other side of the wall.

The service model is the reason to pay the premium. Capella's culturalists work on your stay before you arrive, and unlike most concierge theatre this actually produces things you could not book yourself: a tea master who will sit with you for two hours, an early morning temple visit before the gates open publicly, a workshop with a craftsman whose waiting list is otherwise years long.

Rooms are the most beautiful I have seen in Gion, all Yoshida Shoin timber detailing, deep tubs, and courtyards you can open the doors onto. There is a pool, which in central Gion is close to miraculous, and a small spa.

It is the most expensive per square metre in this guide and it opened recently enough that the review record is still thin. It also has almost no parking and no drop off worth the name, which matters if you are arriving with a lot of luggage.

The verdict

• Worth it for
• In the Miyagawacho geisha quarter, the most atmospheric lanes in Kyoto
• Access to craftsmen, tea masters and temples that guests cannot book alone
• A pool and spa in the middle of Gion, which almost nothing else manages
• The honest drawback
• The highest rates in this guide and a short review history to judge consistency by

An eight hundred year old pond garden with a tea house on it, and the best hotel for families in the city.

The Shakusuien pond garden at the centre of this hotel appears in a twelfth century poetry anthology, which means the koi in front of you are swimming in water that was landscaped before most European cathedrals were finished. Four Seasons built the hotel around it and had the discipline to keep the garden as the view from almost every public room.

It is the largest property in this guide at 180 keys including 57 residences, and that scale buys things the smaller hotels cannot: a proper outdoor pool, a big spa, a kids club, three restaurants and an operation that copes with a family of five without visible strain. Brasserie for breakfast, Sushi Wakon for a Michelin starred counter, and the tea house on the pond for a genuine ceremony.

The rooms are handsome rather than distinctive. If you have stayed at a Four Seasons in Bangkok or Milan you will recognise the palette, and Kyoto only really enters the room through the garden view and a few ceramics. That is the honest trade for the facilities.

Southern Higashiyama near Sanjusangendo is quieter than Gion and better for temples than for restaurants. Expect a taxi or a fifteen minute walk to anywhere you want to eat outside the hotel.

The verdict

• Worth it for
• An eight hundred year old pond garden with its own tea house
• The only outdoor pool in Kyoto luxury, plus a kids club and residences
• Michelin starred Sushi Wakon on the property
• The honest drawback
• The rooms could be in any Four Seasons in the world, so the Kyoto character stays outside the window

A private onsen bath on every terrace, in the same hills as Aman, for roughly a third of the rate.

ROKU sits on the Takagamine hillside a few minutes from Aman, on the site of an old textile works beside the Tenjin river, and it is the best value in Kyoto luxury by a margin that is almost embarrassing. Every one of the 114 rooms has its own terrace with a hot spring bath on it, fed by the Kyoto Funaokaonsen source.

The architecture uses local cedar and Kyoto stone and treats the valley as the main event. The outdoor thermal pool, looking up into the hills, is the picture that sells the hotel, and it delivers in every season including a snowy February morning. Tenjin, the restaurant, does a French Japanese menu that is better than it needs to be at this rate.

Service is where it genuinely surprises. Staff numbers per guest here are closer to the top tier than to a Hilton brand property, and reviewers repeatedly say the same thing: that they arrived expecting a good hotel and left having had the best service of their trip.

The location is the price you pay, again. It is twenty minutes to Kinkakuji and thirty five plus to Gion, and the shuttle runs to a timetable rather than on demand.

The verdict

• Worth it for
• A private hot spring bath on the terrace of every single room
• The best price to quality ratio in Kyoto luxury, and Hilton Honors points work
• An outdoor thermal pool looking up into the northern hills
• The honest drawback
• Thirty five minutes or more to Gion, and the shuttle runs to a fixed timetable

A hillside terrace with the widest view over the city, and a Noh stage that gets used properly.

Banyan Tree opened here in 2024 on the Shogunzuka slope above Nanzenji, and its trump card is elevation. The terrace and the upper rooms look west across the whole basin, and at dusk in winter, with the mountains behind you, it is the best city view of any hotel in Kyoto.

Fifty two rooms, all with a hot spring bath, most with garden or city views, and a Noh stage in the public space that hosts genuine performances rather than a five minute demonstration for guests. The teppan restaurant Ryozen is the standout and the breakfast is Japanese by default and good.

Nanzenji, the Philosopher's Path and Eikando are within walking distance downhill, which is one of the best temple clusters in the city and much quieter than Kiyomizu.

Getting home is uphill. The hotel runs a shuttle to Keage station but the walk back up in August heat is genuinely unpleasant, and a taxi driver will occasionally decline the lane.

The verdict

• Worth it for
• The widest city view of any Kyoto hotel, from the terrace and upper rooms
• A hot spring bath in every room and a working Noh stage
• Walking distance downhill to Nanzenji and the Philosopher's Path
• The honest drawback
• Everything is a climb on the way back, and in summer that walk defeats most people

The literary ryokan, running since 1818, where the old wing rooms are museum pieces you sleep in.

Hiiragiya opened in 1818 and has hosted the writers whose names Japanese readers recognise instantly, Kawabata and Mishima among them. It stands a two minute walk from Tawaraya, and the two have been the pair of great Kyoto inns for two centuries.

There are twenty one rooms across an original wing and a 2006 annexe by the family's own architect. The old wing is the reason to come: individually built rooms with lacquered transoms, hand cut nail covers, cypress baths and gardens you look at from the futon. The annexe rooms are lovely and calm and much less remarkable, so specify the old wing when you book.

Kaiseki here is at the level of a starred restaurant and served in the room. Breakfast can be Japanese or a rather charming Western tray, and the tamagoyaki is famous enough that regulars order it as a side at dinner.

As with any true ryokan, dinner is early, the front door is quiet by eleven, and the corridors are timber, which means you hear other guests. Light sleepers should ask for a garden facing room away from the entrance.

The verdict

• Worth it for
• An 1818 inn with old wing rooms that are effectively protected craftwork
• Kaiseki at starred restaurant level, served in the room
• Central Nakagyo, walkable to Nishiki Market and Pontocho
• The honest drawback
• Annexe rooms cost nearly as much and deliver far less character, so the booking needs care

Nine suites in a Tadao Ando building on the Shirakawa canal, with a restaurant list most hotels would envy.

Tadao Ando does not build hotels, which makes The Shinmonzen an anomaly worth paying attention to. Nine suites, one lift, board marked concrete softened by timber and paper, on the bank of the Shirakawa canal in the quiet north of Gion where the willows hang over the water.

The suites are large by Kyoto standards, all with kitchens, deep baths and canal or garden views, and the whole building runs more like a private house than a hotel. Dining has rotated through some serious names and the current arrangement puts a small counter and a bar in the hands of chefs who cook to the room rather than to a formula.

What you are buying is architecture and privacy in the best located quiet lane in Gion. Shinbashi and the Tatsumi bridge are a two minute walk, and you can be at a Kaburenjo performance in five.

Nine suites means no spa, no gym, no pool and no lobby to sit in. If facilities matter to you, this is the wrong hotel, and at these rates that omission stings for some guests.

The verdict

• Worth it for
• The only Tadao Ando hotel in Kyoto, and only nine suites
• On the Shirakawa canal, the prettiest and quietest corner of Gion
• Suites are large, with kitchens and proper deep baths
• The honest drawback
• No spa, no gym, no pool and no lobby, which is a lot to give up at this rate

On the Oi river in Arashiyama, with onsen baths in the best rooms and Marriott points on the table.

Suiran occupies a slice of riverbank in Arashiyama that used to belong to a villa of the Meiji era, and part of the original teahouse survives as the restaurant. Thirty nine rooms, half of them with private hot spring baths, and the bamboo grove and Tenryuji are a five minute walk away.

The atmosphere is closer to a ryokan than a Marriott brand hotel has any right to be: yukata in the wardrobe, tatami corners, a Kyoto vegetable heavy breakfast, and staff who kneel to open the sliding door. Kyo Suiran, in the old teahouse, does a modern kaiseki, and afternoon tea on the river terrace is genuinely worth stopping for even if you are not staying.

Because it is a Luxury Collection property, Bonvoy points and elite recognition apply, which makes it the best points redemption in Kyoto after the Park Hyatt.

Arashiyama empties beautifully in the evening but it is forty five minutes to Gion and the last useful train back is earlier than you think. Plan dinners locally or budget for taxis.

The verdict

• Worth it for
• Private hot spring baths in the riverside rooms
• Five minutes on foot to the bamboo grove and Tenryuji, before the crowds
• Marriott Bonvoy points and elite recognition apply
• The honest drawback
• Forty five minutes to Gion, and Arashiyama has little to offer after about nine in the evening

Twenty one rooms facing Togetsukyo bridge, with an Alain Ducasse trained kitchen downstairs.

MUNI is the small hotel Arashiyama needed: twenty one rooms in a low building right on the river, looking across at Togetsukyo bridge and the wooded slope of Arashiyama itself. Nothing in the rooms competes with that window, and the design is disciplined enough to know it.

The kitchen is the second reason to book. MUNI ALAIN DUCASSE is a Ducasse collaboration and takes both the French technique and the Kyoto ingredient list seriously, and the breakfast that comes out of the same kitchen is one of the best in the city.

Rooms are large and quiet, with deep tubs and river views from the best category. The whole operation is calm and staffed lightly, which suits the setting.

There is no spa and no pool, and Arashiyama daytime crowds arrive at the door because the bridge is the single most photographed spot in western Kyoto. Mornings and evenings are yours, the middle of the day is not.

The verdict

• Worth it for
• Direct views of Togetsukyo bridge and the Arashiyama slope
• An Alain Ducasse kitchen in the building, and outstanding breakfast
• Only twenty one rooms, so it stays quiet inside
• The honest drawback
• Day tripper crowds arrive at the front door from mid morning until late afternoon

A former ryotei in Gion turned into twenty three rooms, at roughly half the price of its neighbours.

SOWAKA takes a hundred year old ryotei building on the Gion side of Yasaka shrine, adds a modern wing behind it, and charges a fraction of what Capella or the Park Hyatt ask a few streets away. Twenty three rooms, courtyard gardens, and the sound of the lane outside rather than a lobby.

Book in the old building if you can. Those rooms have the original timber, the shoji and the garden doors, and they are the reason the hotel exists. The new wing is comfortable and well finished but plain by comparison. La Bombance, the restaurant, holds a Michelin star for a modern Japanese menu that is far more inventive than the setting suggests.

You are two minutes from Yasaka shrine and five from Ninenzaka, which is the same address the top tier pays three times as much for. There is no spa, no gym, no pool and a small breakfast room, and staffing is light in the evening.

The verdict

• Worth it for
• A genuine Gion address at half the price of the hotels around it
• Michelin starred La Bombance on the property
• Old building rooms with original timber and courtyard gardens
• The honest drawback
• No spa, gym or pool, and the new wing rooms lack the character you came for

Banyan Tree's quiet minimalist brand facing Nijo Castle, with a tea house and no unnecessary noise.

Garrya is the stripped back sibling of Banyan Tree, and Kyoto suits it. Twenty five rooms across from the Nijo Castle moat, all pale plaster, dark timber and paper, with a tea house in the courtyard where a master runs proper ceremonies for guests.

The point of the hotel is calm and cost control. There is no spa and no restaurant beyond breakfast and a small bar, which keeps the rate at roughly half what the Mitsui charges across the road while giving you the same neighbourhood and the same subway line.

Rooms are simple in the way that only works when the finishing is good, and here it is. Ask for a castle facing room on an upper floor; in cherry blossom season the moat trees are directly in the window.

There is almost nothing to do inside the building. This is a hotel for people who intend to be out from eight in the morning until late, and it does not pretend otherwise.

The verdict

• Worth it for
• Directly opposite Nijo Castle and two minutes from the Tozai subway line
• A working tea house with a genuine master in the courtyard
• Roughly half the rate of the luxury hotels in the same district
• The honest drawback
• No spa, no restaurant and very little reason to stay in during the day

Thai service standards ten minutes from the Shinkansen, with the largest entry rooms in this guide.

Dusit Thani opened here in 2023 on Shichijo, a flat ten minute walk from Kyoto Station, and it is the sensible choice for anyone using Kyoto as a base for day trips to Nara, Osaka and Himeji. Entry rooms start around forty square metres, which is enormous for a Japanese city hotel at this price.

The service culture is the Thai one grafted onto a Japanese building, and it works: warmer and more forward than a Kyoto hotel usually is, without tipping into performance. Ayatana does Thai food that is properly spiced rather than adjusted, which after a week of kaiseki is a relief.

The building itself is unremarkable from the street and the surrounding blocks are offices and hotels rather than lanes and temples. You are buying space, comfort and rail access, not atmosphere.

Higashiyama is a fifteen minute taxi and Gion twenty. If your holiday is mostly about walking Kyoto's old streets, pay more and stay east.

The verdict

• Worth it for
• The largest entry level rooms in this guide, from around forty square metres
• Ten minutes on foot to Kyoto Station and the Shinkansen platforms
• Warm, forward service and a genuinely good Thai restaurant
• The honest drawback
• The neighbourhood is offices and hotels, so nothing about the setting says Kyoto

An 1831 inn near the river where a real ryokan night costs less than a business hotel suite.

Seikoro has been running since 1831 and sits on a quiet block between Gojo and the Kamo river, which puts Gion within a fifteen minute walk. It is the ryokan I recommend to people who want the tatami, the kaiseki and the futon without the four figure dollar rate that Tawaraya and Hiiragiya command.

The building is a genuine antique with a slightly eccentric mixture of Meiji era Western furniture and traditional rooms, and the family that runs it has been welcoming the same guests for decades. Rooms vary a great deal in size and outlook, so ask for one facing the garden.

Dinner is a proper multi course kaiseki served in the room and breakfast is Japanese. Both are included in most rates, which is what makes the arithmetic work.

Maintenance is honest rather than immaculate. Expect worn edges, older bathrooms and thin walls, and judge it as a two hundred year old family inn rather than as a luxury hotel.

The verdict

• Worth it for
• An authentic 1831 ryokan night with kaiseki dinner included
• Fifteen minutes on foot from Gion and two from the Kamo river
• Far cheaper than any other ryokan of this vintage in Kyoto
• The honest drawback
• The building shows its age in the bathrooms and the sound insulation

The best hotel you can walk to from the Shinkansen, with the calmest lobby in the district.

THE THOUSAND stands directly across from Kyoto Station's central gate, which sounds like a compromise and turns out to be a genuine asset on a two week Japan itinerary. Bags to the room in five minutes off the Shinkansen, and a lobby that is quiet and low lit rather than a coach party holding pen.

Two hundred and twenty two rooms, all a decent size, with good beds, blackout curtains and a bathroom that separates the bath from the shower. The breakfast buffet is large and better than the category demands, and there is a proper gym.

The design is contemporary Japanese in a restrained corporate register. Nothing here will move you, but nothing will annoy you either, and after a week of tatami floors a Western bed and a bath you can actually lie down in has its own appeal.

It is a station hotel, so every temple is a taxi or a bus ride, and the streets outside are traffic rather than lanes. Use it for arrival and departure nights and spend the middle of the trip east of the river.

The verdict

• Worth it for
• The shortest walk from the Shinkansen of any good hotel in Kyoto
• Large rooms, separate bath and shower, and a strong breakfast
• The calmest lobby in the station district by a wide margin
• The honest drawback
• No character and no walkable temples, so it earns its place on logistics alone