Aman Kyoto – 26 rooms, a secret garden 40 years in the making and $4,510 a night in autumn

Here is a hotel that took 20 years to conceive, 10 years to negotiate the land, another 10 years to build, and then the architect who designed it died one year before it opened. The forest garden surrounding it was assembled by a Kyoto textile family over 40 years with stones collected from across Japan — a project that outlasted the family’s resources and was eventually sold rather than becoming the textile museum it was meant to be. The moss on the stones had decades to establish before a single guest arrived. The hotel won the Wallpaper* Best New Hotel award for 2020. And it has 26 rooms.

That’s Aman Kyoto. The vlog is a single night in a Hotaru Twin room — 685,100 JPY / $4,510 USD including tax in October autumn high season, dinner and breakfast included, one adult. Lunch at Taka-an before check-in. A full garden walk in the morning. Here’s the honest version of what $4,510 gets you in northern Kyoto.

The backstory – a garden built for a museum that never existed

Before Aman Kyoto was Aman Kyoto, the site was called Kamiyagawa Garden, owned by the Asano family — owners of Nishijin textile company Asano Orimono for three generations. The founder’s plan was to build a textile museum on this land, displaying the family’s collection of obi kimono sashes and fabric. To create the setting for that museum, he began collecting stones from across Japan and constructing the garden — not in the style of a traditional Japanese garden, but in his own vision: something that feels less like a curated garden and more like ruins you’ve wandered into from ancient Japan. Giant slab stones create sculpture-like pathways. Trees have been trimmed into deliberate kimono shapes. Moss accumulated over decades while the family continued building.

The project ran for 40 years. The textile museum never materialised. When demand for Nishijin textiles declined and the resources thinned, the family eventually had to part with the site. Kerry Hill found it approximately 20 years before the hotel opened, was completely captivated, and spent a decade negotiating to acquire the land, then another decade getting building permits and constructing the hotel. He died in August 2018 — one year before Aman Kyoto opened in November 2019.

The moss garden in front of The Living Pavilion was named Kerry Hill Garden in his memory. The vlog finds it at 08:25 and it’s worth pausing at rather than walking past.

All of this is visible in the garden if you know what to look for. The Asano family’s 40-year project is the substrate that Kerry Hill built on rather than cleared. The stones are old. The moss is old. The garden was a lifetime’s obsession before it became a hotel’s grounds. That’s the thing about Aman Kyoto that photographs can’t fully convey: the age of what you’re walking through.

The location – north Kyoto, near Kinkakuji

Aman Kyoto is in the Takagamine district in northern Kyoto, at the foot of the Hidari Daimonji mountain range. The physical coordinates: approximately 30 minutes by car from Kyoto Station, 1 hour from Osaka Itami Airport, 2 hours from Kansai International Airport. The resort is at the edge of Kyoto proper, where the city meets the forested mountain slopes.

Kinkakuji — the Golden Pavilion, one of the most photographed buildings in Japan and a UNESCO World Heritage Site — is within walking distance. Seventeen other UNESCO World Heritage temples, shrines, and castles are in the surrounding area: Ryoanji, Kamigamo Shrine, and others that make the northern Kyoto district one of the highest concentration of significant historical sites in the country.

The honest access note: this is not the Higashiyama district where Park Hyatt and Banyan Tree Higashiyama sit. You’re in a completely different part of the city. Kiyomizu-dera, the Gion geisha district, Nishiki Market, and the central Karasuma area all require 30+ minutes by taxi. Aman Kyoto guests who want to do serious city touring either book hotel cars or plan dedicated excursion days. The hotel actively programmes this — temple tours, cycling, helicopter rides, matcha tea, Japanese painting, Zen meditation — but you’re not walking out the door into a historic neighbourhood the way you are at Park Hyatt. You’re in a forest in the foothills of a mountain.

For some guests this is the entire point. For others it’s a consideration worth knowing.

The design – Kerry Hill’s final project

Kerry Hill (1943-2018) was an Australian architect based in Singapore who spent his career designing some of Aman’s most celebrated properties. He also designed Aman Tokyo (2014) and Amanemu (2016). All three embody the same philosophy: clean lines, natural materials, extreme restraint, spaces that frame rather than compete with their settings.

At Aman Kyoto, Hill inserted a series of low-key black timber-slatted pavilions over the garden’s terraced platforms — structures that are deliberately subordinate to what surrounds them. From a distance, the pavilions nearly disappear into the vegetation. Up close, the latticed facades and overhanging rooflines read as contemporary ryokan architecture rather than modernist impositions. The tension between the contemporary and the ancient is where Hill’s work operates: the buildings are clearly new, but they feel as if they belong to the same historical moment as the garden’s stones.

Raku tile panels in The Living Pavilion were handcrafted by local artisans. Bespoke ceramic tiles adorn the restaurant. The interiors throughout reference traditional Japanese architecture — tokonoma alcoves, tatami floors, wooden panels concealing technology — while maintaining the spare proportions of contemporary minimalism. Wallpaper* called it Best New Hotel for 2020. It was his last completed project.

The Hotaru room

The room tour runs from 15:31 to 30:14 — nearly 15 minutes — which is appropriate because the room rewards the time. All four standard room types at Aman Kyoto (Susuki, Nara, Kaede, Hotaru) are identical in size at 60 sqm / 646 sqft and identical in furnishings. The price difference between them is purely about view and privacy.

The Hotaru rooms are at the rear of the property — the most private and most removed from The Living Pavilion. They’re upper floor, west-facing, with views of moss-covered gardens, maple trees, and the mountains in the distance. “Hotaru” means firefly in Japanese. In the right season, the name earns itself.

Inside the room:

• 🌿 Floor-to-ceiling windows looking directly into the garden — the view is the room’s primary feature and it functions as the room’s living art. The green is immediate and dense. In autumn the maples turn and the room’s entire visual register shifts
• 🛏️ King bed (or twin, as in the vlog) positioned at the centre of the room facing the garden. Frette linens in brown earth tones matching the Kogan-esque palette, though this is Kerry Hill’s vocabulary rather than Kogan’s
• 🎋 Tatami mat floors throughout the bedroom — they mimic the sensation of walking on grass, which sounds like marketing but is actually just accurate. The texture underfoot is different from wooden flooring in a way you notice
• 🪵 Wooden panels disguising technology — the TV is concealed. The room doesn’t perform its technology. Reviewers consistently note that the thought of switching on the television here feels wrong in a specific and correct way
• 🛁 Oversized hinoki cypress wood bathtub — hinoki is the wood used in traditional Japanese bathhouses and its resinous, woody aroma when steamed with hot water is the scent equivalent of what the entire hotel is trying to do aesthetically. The bathtub takes about 30 minutes to fill at full size. Plan accordingly. The heated stone floor for the walk from bed to bath is a detail so good it sounds made up
• 🚽 Toto washlet — Japan’s contribution to bathroom civilisation, present and correct
• 🍵 Traditional Japanese cushion seating area (zabuton) alongside the standard sofa — for the tea ceremony moments, or just for reading on the floor the way a person in a traditional Japanese house would

The Susuki rooms are the entry-level option, closer to The Living Pavilion, east-facing, ground floor or upper floor, with a private balcony. Multiple reviewers specifically praise the Susuki balcony. The Nara and Kaede rooms offer intermediate privacy levels between Susuki and Hotaru. The room pricing is genuinely unusual — you’re paying for privacy and view distance from the public areas, not for room size or furnishings, which are the same across all four types. It’s a direct statement of values: solitude has a price premium here.

The vlog checks the room rates on the website at 30:38 and they’re not comfortable viewing for the uninitiated. October autumn high season pricing is at the absolute peak of the year.

Dining – Taka-an and The Living Pavilion

⛩️ Taka-an – omakase kaiseki

Lunch at Taka-an from 02:39 is the vlog’s opening food sequence before check-in, and it’s the right call to lead with this. Taka-an is the dedicated Japanese restaurant with omakase kaiseki service — no menu, chef-driven progression of courses, the highest expression of Kyoto’s kaiseki tradition applied to whatever the season and the market are providing that day.

The format: the chef cooks each course in front of you. A kimono-clad server pours sake and translates. The courses are not described ahead of time; you’re receiving whatever has been decided for you. This is the omakase contract — you trust the kitchen entirely. At Aman Kyoto, the kitchen earns that trust. Snow crab in season prepared six different ways (as sushi, in a dumpling, grilled, in rice, in chawanmushi), local ingredients foraged from the surrounding forest, the spare bespoke ceramic tableware made specifically for the restaurant. One reviewer describes it as “one of the most delectable meals of our lives.” Multiple guests eat here twice during their stay.

Reservations are essential and highly recommended even for hotel guests — book when you book the room. Pre-requesting a specific seasonal ingredient (snow crab, Kyoto vegetables in season) via the concierge can be arranged in advance.

🌿 The Living Pavilion – dinner and breakfast

The dinner from 35:31 and breakfast from 56:22. The Living Pavilion is the all-day dining space — innovative Western and local cuisine using Kyoto-area ingredients, described by the hotel as reflecting the changing seasons. The space itself is the Kerry Hill Garden’s immediate context: breakfast here is eaten facing the moss garden he named.

Dinner at The Living Pavilion is the included evening option (Taka-an is the premium alternative at additional cost). The food quality is consistently praised but reviews note it operates at a different register from Taka-an — more accessible, less ceremonial, the place where you eat when you want the food to be excellent without being the entire focus of your evening.

Breakfast here is widely singled out as a particular strength. Both Japanese and Western options are available, both executed at the level you’d expect at this price point. The Japanese breakfast — served in the pavilion overlooking the moss garden in the morning light — is described by nearly every reviewer who mentions it as a genuine highlight of the stay.

Afternoon tea is available at ¥12,000 / $80 USD per person, for parties of two or more.

The spa and natural onsen

The spa from 11:22. The Aman Spa at Kyoto runs on natural hot spring water from Shozan Kamiyagawa Onsen — alkaline simple spring water. There are three private treatment rooms with garden views and a relaxation lounge. The key facility is the private onsen bath, which multiple reviewers describe as the closest the hotel comes to a swimming pool and the single best experience on the property.

The onsen is designed to appear almost naturally occurring — stones and planting arranged to make the hot spring baths read as part of the garden rather than a hotel facility. This is the Kerry Hill approach to everything at Aman Kyoto: things that are constructed are made to look as though they grew there.

One guest describes it as: “The most exquisite experience was our private use of the onsen.” Snow crab for dinner, private onsen at night, hinoki bath in the room — the bathing experience at Aman Kyoto operates as a complete programme rather than a series of add-ons.

There is no gym and no swimming pool. The hotel is explicit about this. Exercise at Aman Kyoto means walking the forest paths, meditation, yoga that combines with forest bathing, or using the surrounding trails and mountain approach. This is a deliberate philosophical position rather than an omission. If a gym is a hard requirement for your stay, this is the wrong Kyoto hotel.

The garden – morning walk and what to actually explore

The vlog’s morning sequence from 46:01 onward is the part that most concisely explains why people pay what they pay here. The garden exploration covers the Zen garden, the mountain path, the Suite Pavilions terrace, the autumn leaves terrace, the water lily pond, the Tengamine Garden grand staircase (a long stone staircase ascending into the upper forest), the Nagomi dining deck, and the Stone Buddha.

The complimentary garden walk with a guide is one of those hotel-experience features that sounds optional and turns out to be essential. The guide (referenced by name in multiple reviews as genuinely knowledgeable) walks guests through the garden’s layers of history — identifying the stones the Asano family collected, pointing out the kimono shapes cut into the trees, finding the hidden waterfalls, explaining the architectural choices Kerry Hill made in response to specific garden features. Without the guided walk, you’re in a beautiful forest. With it, you’re in a 40-year project that three generations of a textile family shaped into something they never got to use for the purpose they intended.

The turndown service and gifting from 41:36 show another layer of the Aman operational approach: gifts left in the room each evening, multiple daily housekeeping, staff who remember your coffee preference without being asked, concierge who pre-arranges seasonal ingredient requests at Taka-an. With 26 rooms and the staff ratio that implies, the service at Aman Kyoto is proportionally unlike anything a larger property can replicate.

Pavilion and suite options

The vlog tours the Suite Pavilions at 47:59 for context. Two two-bedroom villa-type buildings sit at the upper end of the property. The Washigamine Pavilion — 165.7 sqm, east-facing, overlooking the entire garden with Mt. Hiei in the distance, adjacent to the Tengamine stone steps — is the pinnacle of the property. It has a living room, traditional tatami room, western dining room and kitchen, floor-to-ceiling windows, and the option to sleep on futons in the tatami room if you want the full ryokan experience. The Takagamine Suite version of the two-bedroom configuration runs 226.2 sqm.

For guests considering a once-in-a-lifetime Kyoto stay, the pavilions are what the property’s concept fully realises — the 26-room hotel with its staff ratios, in the 40-year-old forest garden, at the foot of the mountain, with a two-floor private villa and views of everything at once.

Pricing and the Aman approach to money

685,100 JPY / $4,510 USD per night in the Hotaru Twin during October 2024 autumn high season, dinner and breakfast included, one adult.

Aman’s pricing structure is worth understanding upfront: they are not on Marriott Bonvoy, Hilton Honors, IHG, or any major points programme. There are no credit card points pathways to Aman properties. The hotel charges what it charges, it does not apologise for it, and the competitive context it benchmarks against is other Aman properties and a small number of ultra-luxury independent hotels globally rather than the broader luxury hotel market.

The honest value framing: $4,510 per night for one person in a 60sqm room is a genuinely large number. What it includes is dinner and breakfast at restaurants that would be expensive standalone meals, a natural onsen, a 32-hectare private forest garden that nowhere else in Kyoto replicates, 26-room service levels, and a night in the most celebrated hotel designed by one of the 20th century’s most significant hospitality architects. Whether that justifies the number is a personal calculation rather than an objective one.

What reviewers across the full price range consistently say: the disappointment rate at Aman Kyoto is notably low. People who book it knowing what it is come back. This is not true of every expensive hotel.

Best time to visit: Autumn (mid-November for peak foliage) and cherry blossom season (late March-April) are when Aman Kyoto is at its most visually spectacular and at its most expensive. The summer green of June is deeply beautiful and quieter. Winter visits — particularly after snow, which is rare but happens — are described by guests as some of the most extraordinary experiences in Japanese hotel travel. February and early March offer the lowest rates and a particular austere beauty in the garden.

Frequently asked questions

📹 Video by ST Travel