Aman Kyoto - A Refreshing Retreat

Newly opened Aman Kyoto is located in a secret garden that floods the senses and the spirit with nature’s goodness. Grace Ma checks in for a refreshing retreat

- Grace Ma

Manabu Horiguchi has lived in Kyoto’s Gentaku neighborhood all his life. Yet it was only when the 31-year-old was hired as Chef de Partie at Aman Kyoto that he realized a secret garden had existed all this while, just 10 minutes from his doorstep. Such is the magic surrounding luxury resort chain Aman’s third resort in Japan, that even for the locals, it’s a mystery waiting to be unravelled.

The resort is only a 30-minute drive from Kyoto Station, but as you near the 32ha grounds located in north Kyoto, the urban landscape fades into a glade of maple and Japanese cedar trees. Granted, it was hard to visualize that beauty in an 8 pm arrival, but Aman’s magical hospitality was still felt right away as a team of six welcomed me the moment my chauffeur-driven car pulled into the driveway.

Dinner had been arranged at the Japanese restaurant Taka-An, but Head Chef Koji Mita saw my tired face and suggested a simple but comforting bowl of nyumen and conger eel in kombu and bonito flake dashi instead, telling me to take the nine-course kaiseki menu another day. I slurped down the delicious noodles, happy as a lark.

OASIS OF SERENITY

The next morning, the mechanized blinds of my suite rolled up to reveal a serene, sun-dappled garden through the floor-to-ceiling windows. It felt surreal, especially in the wake of Typhoon Hagibis that had hit Japan only four days earlier. My minimalist room resembled an art gallery: ikebana in a tall earthen vessel and a hanging scroll with the printed image of a fog rising from Kyoto’s Takagamine Mountain occupy a tokonoma, an alcove for the display of artistic items.