Comfort level

Hyatt Regency Kyoto
Photo: Hyatt Corporation

Why, the Materialist has often wondered, are there no good Western-style hotels in Kyoto? Certainly one could argue it's because there don't need to be: Kyoto is, after all, known for its ryokan, traditional Japanese inns that promise (and deliver) a fantasy of Japan, where everything, from etiquette to meals, follows a code written many years ago and perfected over generations.

But what if all that etiquette is making you a little squirrelly? What if, after a long day of pilgrimage, walking from beautifully maintained  (and this being Japan, they inevitably are) ji (shrine) to ji, you want nothing more than to go back to your room, flop down on your bed, and have a nice big beer followed by a nice big burp? Then what do you do?

This was exactly the problem confronting the Materialist when her father, after only three temples--Daitoku-ji, Kinkaku-ji,and Ryoan-ji, which march along Kyoto's northwestern flank--sank down onto a stone bench outside a rice-cake stand, and announced he "had had enough of the jis." (His comment echoed one the Materialist's friend Maer had made last December, when, upon sitting down in yet another spectacularly tiled restaurant in Fez, he looked around and said, "You know, I've really had it with these tiles.")