Luxury Travel

Japan is one of the few countries where the most expensive room in the city is not the best thing money can buy. The ceiling here is set by the ryokan and by the counter, and both are small, both are personal, and both are hard to get into. A traveller who books only international five-star hotels will have a comfortable trip and will miss the point entirely. The luxury proposition in Japan is craft and attention at a very small scale, and it is worth building the itinerary around that rather than around square metres.

A night at a serious ryokan is a structured experience rather than accommodation. You arrive in the middle of the afternoon because the evening is the product. Dinner is kaiseki, a long sequence of small dishes governed by the season and served either in your room or in a private dining room, and while you eat, your futon is laid out on the tatami behind you. There is an onsen, often both indoor and outdoor, sometimes a private one you reserve by the hour, and breakfast is a second full meal. Check-out is early, usually mid-morning. This shapes the day around the inn instead of the other way round, which is exactly why one night is rarely enough and two is the right unit.

In Hakone, ninety minutes from Tokyo, we hold several of the properties that define the category. Gora Kadan occupies the site of an imperial family retreat. Hakone Ginyu is built along a ridge so that the valley falls away beneath the baths. KAI Hakone sits on the river at Yumoto. The Fujiya Hotel is a different proposition altogether, a Western-style hotel open since the late nineteenth century that is essentially a museum of early Japanese hospitality to foreigners. Nearby, HOSHINOYA Fuji reworks the idea entirely as a cabin resort above Lake Kawaguchi.

Kyoto is where the scarce commodity is not luxury but quiet, and the properties worth paying for are the ones that buy it back. Hiiragiya is a historic ryokan in the centre of the city. HOSHINOYA Kyoto is up the Oi River in Arashiyama and reached by the hotel's own boat, which removes you from the crowds in a way no amount of money can achieve in the middle of Gion. Yoshida Sanso is a small former imperial residence on a hillside. HOTEL THE MITSUI KYOTO sits beside Nijo Castle with its own hot spring, and SOWAKA is a converted ryokan and former restaurant in the Gion quarter. The right answer depends entirely on whether you want to be inside the city or above it.

In Tokyo the choice is essentially between the view and the retreat. Aman Tokyo occupies the top floors of a tower at Otemachi and is as calm as a building that size can be. HOSHINOYA Tokyo is stranger and more interesting: a ryokan stacked vertically in the Otemachi business district, with tatami floors throughout and a hot-spring bath open to the sky at the top. Hotel Gajoen Tokyo is a historic property in Meguro whose interiors are a genuine cultural artefact rather than decoration.

The dining is where budgets should go. Kikunoi and Hyotei in Kyoto are among the reference points for kaiseki, and both are long, formal and seasonal. NARISAWA in Tokyo built its argument on Japanese woodland and farmland rather than French technique. Kyubey in Ginza is sushi at a counter where the itinerary is decided by the chef in front of you. In Kobe, Wakkoqu and Mouriya are the serious rooms for certified Tajima-strain beef. In Kanazawa, Tsubajin has been serving Kaga cuisine since 1752, including jibuni, the duck dish that belongs to that city and is not really served properly anywhere else. All of these seat very few people. Reservations open weeks or months ahead and are the constraint on the itinerary, not an afterthought to it.

Beyond Tokyo and Kyoto, Kanazawa is the most rewarding addition for this kind of trip, because its craft traditions are still working ones and Asadaya is a ryokan of real pedigree. Yufuin in Kyushu is where the ryokan idea goes rural, at Sansou Murata and KAI Yufuin. Ryokan Kurashiki sits on the willow canal in the old merchant quarter. In Shikoku, Dogokan and Funaya put you beside Dogo Onsen. Nara Hotel and Nikko Kanaya Hotel are the historic Western-style equivalents, and both are worth a night for what they are as much as for what they offer.

Pacing and privacy do more for this kind of trip than any single booking. Move less. Three or four bases across eight to twelve days, with two nights minimum anywhere with a bath worth using. Use mornings deliberately: Fushimi Inari before eight is a different place from Fushimi Inari at eleven, and most temple gardens are close to empty at opening. Where a property or a practitioner offers a private booking, whether that is a tea ceremony, a kimono fitting or a garden visit outside public hours, it is generally arranged in advance rather than on the day.

On the ground, the Green Car on the shinkansen is a modest premium for a quieter carriage, private transfers remove the station-navigation problem entirely on arrival days, and luggage forwarding means your bags meet you at the next inn rather than travelling with you. Together those three things are what actually make a high-end Japan itinerary feel effortless, far more than the hotel category does.

The single most important practical fact is timing. The best rooms at the best ryokan sell out for cherry blossom and for autumn colour six to twelve months ahead, and the very small ones sell out further out than that. If your dates are fixed to either season, the properties decide the itinerary and everything else arranges itself around them. If your dates are flexible, late autumn and deep winter give you far better access to the same rooms.

We can help you build this the right way round: securing the ryokan and the counters first, then shaping the route between them, and keeping enough space in each day that the trip feels unhurried rather than merely expensive. Talk to us about what you want the evenings to look like and we will work outwards from there.