Detailed Review
Hyatt Regency Kyoto is the newest luxury hotel in Kyoto. Located just minutes from JR Kyoto Station, in the Higashiyama Shichijo district, the traditional and cultural heart of Kyoto, it is ideal for business and leisure travellers. Nearby places of interest include Kyoto's National Museum, and Chishakuin, Sanjusangendo and Yogenin Temples.
Guestrooms are designed with a simple yet functional concept in mind, using natural colours, white oak wood and Japanese kimono fabric. All rooms are equipped with a flat-screen television and a work desk with high-speed broadband Internet access. Each room features a spacious granite bathroom with separate deep soaking bathtub and wet area.
Enjoy every productivity advantage in warm and inviting guestrooms including one king or two single beds, generous work area, broadband Internet access.
Independent Reviews
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"Contemporary Japanese styling under the austere protection of 1001 ancient Buddhas"
Hyatt Regency Kyoto
By Caroline Major
At the quiet end of town, the Hyatt is Kyoto’s newest international hotel. It’s a stylish renovation of a block surrounded by gardens, which were established for Emporer Goshirakawa 850 years ago. The hotel is surrounded by temples. Most auspiciously, it faces the Sanhusangen-do temple, where in turn 1001 figures of the Buddha face it. Fronting those are 43 deities on cloud podiums, which still stand ready to protect, a hundred years after they were created.
Beyond the bamboo grove concealing the timber-clad hotel, the atrium focuses on a wonderful spiral wooden staircase, which is an apt entrance to the Italian restaurant. There’s plenty of space, yet the mastery of warming light and the smattering of artful installations create an intimacy within the expansive lobby. Commissions from local artists include a handmade paper wall done in charcoal and dried on the street. Check it carefully to see a gutter grate, a pothole, the imprint of several abandoned soft-drink cans and the bumps of random rocks. It’s gritty, real and super-cool. Another uses an old engine block as a vase while in the bar a book collection becomes the walls of an intimate little alcove.
The rooms:
Contemporary Japanese was the mantra guiding design firm Super Potato in their quest to put something new into the Kyoto scene. What they succeeded in delivering is something that feels to me, a Gaijin, very Japanese. The room itself is white, with oak-panelled walls and creamy paper, shaded with neutral yet slightly translucent concertina blinds. Carpets are thick, soft and neutral and the lamps are standing cubes. Furnishings are built-in, functional, minimal. The whole thing comes together with the headboard panel stretching from one side of the room to the other. In the muted florals of traditional kimono textiles, it works well.
The bathrooms sport black granite flooring with a genius step-up wet room. The glass wall dividing this area from the pretty little vanity with its comfortable stool, drawers and excellent lighting conceals a combined shower and bath as you’ve not seen before. As well as the tub, there’s a shower with a gorgeous shower stool made of cypress wood. Why is it that western culture has never thought to put stools into shower rooms? The sit-down wash makes perfect sense - and is hip to boot.
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