Hoshinoya: Experience Traditional Japanese Hospitality

Published March 25, 2018 on the former blog

I don’t know how I have never heard about this absolutely impeccable hotel chain Hoshinoya. The hotel pretty much has everything I’d ever want in my future house. No matter where you go you are surrounded by amazing craftsmanship and a perfect blend of old and new. This specific hotel can be found in the center of Tokyo right by the main Tokyo station and the imperial palace (Google Maps).

Starting at the entrance area (featured image above) you get the old fashioned entrance where you’re asked to take off your shoes. A theme of this entrance seems to be the square shape reflected in the tatami, the shoe boxes on the side and the shoji (read more about shoji in this post) with the square partitions serving as a backdrop for the flower arrangement.

The lounge area is full of custom made furniture such as this sofa. The base of the sofa is coated with black laquer (“shikki”), the arm and back rest with bent bamboo. Even the pillows are made out of prestigious Japanese fabric. My mission is to find out where this sofa is made so I can hopefully get this for our own house one day. 

Another beautiful area of the lounge is this kitchen. You are immediately welcomed by the classic nambu iron tea kettle and on the shelf in the back you can see Kaikado’s tea caddies, the famous wooden bucket (ki-oke) by Nakagawa Mokkogei and many more signature work by craftsmen all around Japan.

Of course the hotel also has a generous hot spring that takes it’s water from 1500m below the ground.

And throughout the entire hotel you’ll be accompanied by these beautifully designed shoji room dividers (read more about shoji in this post).

If you haven’t had enough of this beautiful interior, there’s more to see on their website and what you’ll see is that they have four more hotels in Japan and one in Bali. What I really love about these other locations is that each of them is completely different and blends wonderfully into it’s environment and culture. So you’ll find the Kyoto hotel to be smaller, right outside the city surrounded by greenery and by a river.

There is another hotel located in the south of Japan, on the Taketomi Island. Here you will find it to be like a small town where each room is it’s own small house with the traditional red tiled roofs, walking distance from white sand beaches.

If you’re still reading I highly recommend visiting their website that is equally beautifully designed as everything in their physical space. I for one hope that I will find myself in one of these hotels sometime in my very near future.