Aman Kyoto

A 5-star hotel, as Google Hotels classes it, with 2 Keys from the MICHELIN Guide: 26 rooms, a suite and 2 pavilions in a 2.4-hectare garden inside 32 hectares of old forest at Takagamine, in north-west Kyoto. It opened on 1 November 2019, according to Ciao Nihon, to a design by Kerry Hill Architects.

The official home page calls it Aman’s «second» Japanese sanctuary; Michelin counts it as the third, after Aman Tokyo and Amanemu. Tripadvisor lists 24 rooms and 2 villas, and the spa menu gives the garden 8 acres, about 3.2 hectares. In 1615, the experiences page recalls, the calligrapher Hon’ami Koetsu founded an artists’ village here.

The rooms page lists 7 types. 4 rooms of 60 m², Kaede, Nara, Susuki Terrace and Susuki, with a king or twin beds (Susuki king only), tatami, a tokonoma, a Japanese hinoki tub and a separate shower; the Takagamine Suite of 165 m², with living room, tatami room, dining room and kitchen; and 2 pavilions with 2 bedrooms each, Takagamine at 226 m² and Washigamine at 241 m².

Every rate includes breakfast, the minibar with alcohol, the aperitif and the onsen. The Takagamine Pavilion’s page still lists a 60 m² Hotaru room, which the index omits and whose address now opens the Nara page.

The 2 pavilions face east across the whole garden to Mount Hiei: Washigamine on the highest, most secluded ground, Takagamine on a 6-metre stone wall above maples and cedars. Kaede rooms, west-facing on the first floor, look into maples; Nara rooms at mossy walls and trunks; Susuki rooms, first floor and east-facing, down on the moss garden; Susuki Terrace rooms, on the ground floor, onto their own terrace.

The MICHELIN Guide notes that views vary from room to room, between garden, mountain and city. A guest on Tripadvisor in November 2024 recommends Kaede because it is off the ground floor.

At 1 Okitayama Washimine-cho in Kita ward, at the foot of Hidari Daimonji in the Takagamine district, says the official page. It is a fenced forest within the city, away from the temple crowds; the centre means a car, and Kyoto Station is 30 minutes away.

At night it is dark and silent, and a 2023 guest suggests a torch for the paths.

Measured on 7 October 2026 on OpenStreetMap’s roads from the hotel’s Google Maps pin: Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Pavilion, is 1.7 km away, 22 minutes on foot or 5 by car; Genko-an 1 km, 14 minutes; Koetsu-ji 1.3 km, 17 minutes, a little under the 20 the experience guide gives. Ryoan-ji is 3.1 km, about 40 minutes on foot or 8 by car, and Kitano Tenmangu 34 to 41 minutes on foot.

Without traffic, Kamigamo Shrine is 9 minutes by car and Gion about 18. The hotel lends electric bikes from 8am to 6pm to riders at least 144 cm tall, and runs guided cycling tours.

The official page gives 30 minutes by car from Kyoto Station, an hour from Itami, Osaka’s domestic airport, and from Kansai 2 hours by car or a 90-minute express train to Kyoto. The pavilions and the Takagamine Suite include a private car both ways from Kyoto, Itami or Kansai, plus priority on the house car into the centre.

For the other rooms the car is booked. A 2023 guest describes the driver meeting them on the platform.

Yes, according to Google Hotels, which lists parking, self-parking and valet, as Tripadvisor does for valet. The official pages give neither a price nor a number of spaces, and speak only of the house cars and the drop-off service into the centre.

No: Kyoto is inland, and the water at Aman Kyoto is the garden’s, its streams, the pond beside the tea house and the Kamiya River by the Susuki rooms, as the Susuki page puts it. No official page offers trips to the coast.

No. The wellness page states that the hotel has no pool and no gym, and Google Hotels marks the pool as absent. The water to sink into is the onsen’s, one pool indoors and one outside.

2 restaurants, says the dining page. The Living Pavilion, built round its fireplace, serves guests breakfast from 7 to 11.30am, lunch from 11.30am to 2.30pm, afternoon tea from 1 to 5.30pm and dinner from 5.30 to 10pm, a Western kitchen of embers, smoke and fermentation; the dinner menu is 29,000 yen and the lunch menu 18,000, service and tax included.

Taka-An is the Japanese table of chef Shinichiro Takagi, trained at Kyoto Kitcho: an omakase kaiseki that never repeats, lunch from noon to 3pm and dinner from 6 to 10pm. From 8 November 2026 there is a snow crab menu, for at least 2 and booked 3 days ahead: the Taka-An page runs it to the end of February 2027, the festive programme only to 30 December, at 120,000 yen a head. Both restaurants take non-residents by reservation.

Breakfast comes with every room, the rooms page says: the Kyoto breakfast arrives in a wooden box, with sashimi and obanzai, clay-pot rice or soy-milk porridge, and Kuroge Wagyu or grilled fish. Google Hotels marks it «extra charge»; on the official pages it is not.

The official offers, valid until 31 March 2028, add dinner: «Stay and Dine», with breakfast and dinner at the Living Pavilion, and «An Evening at Taka-an», with omakase every night. Afternoon matcha, soft drinks at the Living Pavilion and the aperitif of Champagne, wine and sake are free as well.

Aman Spa has an indoor and an outdoor onsen with separate baths for men and women, 3 private treatment rooms and a relaxation room, according to the wellness page and the spa menu. The water comes from a mineral spring nearby; yoga, meditation and forest bathing happen in the garden.

The official sources give no floor area and list no sauna, steam room or cold plunge.

No swimsuit: the spa menu asks guests to shower first, to bathe without any attire and without a phone or camera, and to stay no longer than 30 minutes because of the water’s heat and minerals. Men and women bathe separately; to bathe as a couple or a family, a Tripadvisor guest in November 2024 booked a private session.

On tattoos, no official source read publishes a rule, neither the website nor the spa menu, and none of the reviews read mentions one.

For hotel guests the onsen is included, as every room page says, but places are limited and sessions are booked; treatments are extra, their prices including 16% service and 10% tax, according to the spa menu.

The official pages publish no spa day pass for non-residents; the restaurants and afternoon tea are open to them by reservation. The spa menu describes a half-day programme of about 6 hours, with a treatment, the onsen, yoga and lunch, without saying whether outside guests can book it.

The spa menu offers the Aman Kyoto Signature Journey of 60 or 90 minutes, with oils of Kitayama cedar, hinoki, yuzu, green tea and camellia, shiatsu and acupuncture of 60 to 120 minutes, reflexology, tailored massages and facials, including a gold-leaf mask; every treatment opens with a foot ritual. It prints no prices.

Treatments run from 10am to 9.30pm, with last entry at 8.30pm, according to the wellness page, read on 15 October 2026; until 18 October 2026, the onsen follows temporary separate timetables for women and men, with advance reservations requested. Cancelling with less than 24 hours’ notice costs the full price, and the minimum age is 16.

Children can come, within limits. The MICHELIN Guide says rooms take no cots or extra beds, and some categories take a third guest for 20,000 yen a night; Google Hotels lists babysitting. For a family the 2-bedroom pavilions are the natural choice.

The experience guide offers tsumami-zaiku craft from age 10 and a version for children of 5 to 9; spa treatments need guests of 16 or parental consent, and the electric bikes a height of 144 cm.

Besides the restaurants and the spa: the Senkutsu tea house, the garden with its stone stairs, the Garden Terrace, the bikes, and a calendar of experiences, from ikebana and miniature gardens to ink painting, shojin cooking, Uji tea and Zen meditation, says the experiences page. Wi-Fi is free; for the MICHELIN Guide it is entirely non-smoking and takes no pets.

Google Hotels also lists laundry, a concierge, a doctor on call and a 24-hour front desk, and marks the hotel as not accessible; a 2026 guest notes that the paths between rooms and facilities are laid in irregular stone.

The offers page, read on 7 October 2026, lists 4: «An Evening at Taka-an» and «Stay and Dine», from one night until 31 March 2028; «Extend Your Stay», a third night free in a pavilion or the suite from 4 January to 30 September 2027; and the Aman Japan Journey, at least 2 nights at each of Aman’s 3 Japanese hotels, with breakfast, a guaranteed upgrade and 10% off dining and spa.

None shows a price. For the pavilions and the suite, Michelin says, the stay is paid in full 30 days ahead, and cancellation is free only up to 60 days before arrival.

Yes: the celebrations page describes weddings small and large, including a buyout of the whole resort, and nearby Kamigamo Shrine for a Shinto ceremony. The Living Pavilion seats up to 28, the Garden Terrace about 24 seated or 30 standing, Taka-An up to 24 and its private room 6; in the Washigamine Pavilion a private chef cooks for a small party.

The site publishes no prices or wedding packages; the same page covers business retreats, anniversaries and engagements.

The 2026 festive programme has a Japanese evening instead: on 31 December toshikoshi soba, the buckwheat noodles of the year’s last day, from 4 to 6pm at the Living Pavilion, then at about 9pm a set with Champagne and canapés served in your room; from 31 December to 3 January Taka-An serves its Kyoto Hirai beef kaiseki at 59,000 yen a head, booked 2 days ahead.

On 1 January 2027 there is a lion dance at 8.30 and 9.30am, mochi pounding, a sake tasting and the year’s first calligraphy, with osechi at breakfast on 1 and 2 January. The programme does not say whether the in-room set is included, and lists no gala dinner.

The official pages announce no closure. On Google Hotels on 7 October 2026, 108 of the 116 nights from 8 October 2026 to 31 January 2027 carried a price; 11 and 13 October, 1, 2, 4 and 27 November and 25 and 26 January did not, which does not mean the hotel was closed.

The experiences page promises cherry blossom in spring, green maples in summer, red and amber in autumn and snow with camellias in winter. Aman’s own peak seasons run from 20 December 2026 to 3 January 2027 and from 15 March to 5 May 2027.

On Google Hotels, read on 7 October 2026 for 2 adults and one night, taxes and fees included: 666,072 yen on 8 October 2026, 900,416 yen on 17 October, 900,416 yen on 3 November, Culture Day, 951,456 yen on 21 November, the weekend before Labour Thanksgiving Day, 466,592 yen on 13 December, 803,880 yen on 31 December and 378,972 yen on 4 January 2027.

Of the 116 nights read, 108 carried a price, from 378,972 yen, January’s low, to 951,456 yen on 21 and 25 November. The calendar shows the night’s lowest figure without naming the room; the holidays are those of the Japanese government’s calendar. From 29 December to 3 January, Aman’s peak season, every night stood at 849,816 yen.

On 7 October 2026 Google showed 4.3/5 from 449 ratings and Tripadvisor 3.9/5 from 75, with a Travellers’ Choice award and 199th place among 355 Kyoto hotels; the MICHELIN Guide gives 2 Keys and 20/20 from 2 verified guests. On Tripadvisor cleanliness scores 4.6, sleep 4.5, rooms 4.4, service 3.8 and value 2.7.

Of the 278 latest Google reviews with text, each read in full, 78% of those who discuss the location are positive, 68% on the rooms and 66% on the staff and services. The praise goes to the garden, the silence and breakfast. The rate is among Kyoto’s highest, the centre means a car, and treatments, experiences and dinners outside the packages are charged on top.

Google Hotels’ figures for Japan already carry taxes and fees: for 8 October 2026 Trip.com’s link counts 160,752 yen of them within a 670,752-yen total, while Yahoo! Travel asked 666,072 yen and Ikyu 680,874. The restaurant menus and the spa menu include 16% service and 10% consumption tax; the festive dinner menu prints 15% service.

Extras are the treatments, dinners outside a package, experiences such as the 50,000-yen tea ceremony for 2, and cars. Michelin adds 20,000 yen a night for each guest beyond 2 where the room allows, and Tripadvisor puts the average standard room between $2,561 and $5,860.

Check-in from 3pm and check-out at noon, according to Google Hotels and the MICHELIN Guide. The Aman Japan Journey includes early arrival and late departure when there is room; a guest in August 2025 was given a room to work in after check-out, until an evening train.