Picking up from the previous post: after a wonderful kaiseki dinner, we took a taxi back to the hotel and officially checked in.

Beautiful but incredibly stingy: Roku Kyoto

Our taxi driver had been a backpacker when he was younger, traveling around the world, and had even spent some time living in the U.S. His English was better than that of many hotel front desk agents. As the only one in the family who’s even somewhat extroverted, I chatted with him the whole way back. Our kid fell asleep halfway through the ride.

Check-in was done on a sofa in the hotel lobby, so there was no need to stand at the front desk. The hotel offered small snacks, chocolate, and tea, but unfortunately we were still way too full to eat much.

The check-in process was painfully slow, especially with my partner holding our sleeping child the entire time. Every second felt like forever. The agent helping us was a young woman from Eastern Europe, and she didn’t seem to know a lot of the details, going back and forth to ask several times. Overall, she just didn’t feel very professional or well trained.

The reason I say this hotel is so stingy is that our two FN came from my partner’s Silver status and my Diamond status. But the hotel refused to combine the elite benefits across the two nights, saying that breakfast would only be included for one night. Thankfully, since the hotel doesn’t have a lounge, they gave us some dining credit that could be used toward breakfast.

The room had already received turndown service, with fruit, snacks, and water waiting for us.

They said we had been upgraded to a top-floor room, but in reality it was basically not an upgrade at all. Our kid slept on the sofa bed, which had already been made up. They even provided kid-sized slippers.

They had also set out a little step stool for our kid, which was a very thoughtful touch.

I took another photo the next morning.

Everything outside the window was lush and green.

A quick snapshot on the way to breakfast.

Yesterday had been bright and beautiful, but today it started raining.

That said, Roku was especially beautiful in the rain. Deep in the mountains, it felt almost isolated from the rest of the world.

Time for breakfast. There was no line this time, and we were seated quickly. Our 5-year-old could eat from the buffet for free, but anything ordered from the menu cost extra.

That wouldn’t have been a problem, except the buffet only had a continental-style breakfast, with almost no hot food at all. That made the hotel feel even more cheap.

The restaurant itself was also beautiful, with huge floor-to-ceiling windows. If only there had been some real hot food, I could have sat there all day.

Given that the buffet had no hot food, the menu looked pretty underwhelming too. I barely even felt like taking photos. We ordered a duck egg and a bone-in sausage. The duck egg didn’t taste all that different from a chicken egg, and the sausage was actually pretty good. The key point, though, was the portion size: even our picky little eater could have finished the whole thing alone.

Maybe there just wasn’t much worth photographing, because the only thing I ended up taking a picture of was the fruit.

We also ordered eggs Benedict, and when it arrived I almost laughed in disbelief. It was the first time I’d ever seen eggs Benedict with only one egg.

To be fair, the small dishes at the buffet all tasted pretty good. But you can’t really expect to fill up on cold food, can you? The only hot item was a tiny serving—really just one sip—of pumpkin soup. Our kid liked it, and thankfully there was no limit, so I kept going back to ask for more and got three cups for the kid. What a hassle.

This breakfast really did not match the positioning of the hotel, and my partner was thoroughly annoyed by the end of it.

Let’s go back to appreciating the scenery instead.

The tea room was probably the place we visited most often. Every time we called a car in the app, we waited there.

Sanzen-in

Because it was raining, it felt like the perfect day to visit somewhere full of greenery. We adjusted our itinerary based on the weather and decided to visit Sanzen-in and Kifune Shrine, two attractions that are both quite far from central Kyoto. It took about half an hour by taxi from the hotel to Sanzen-in. Listening to the steady sound of the rain along the way was so soothing that I ended up dozing off again.

If you take public transportation, you have to walk up a long uphill stretch. A taxi can take you straight to the top, which is much easier.

Sanzen-in (さんぜんいん) is a Tendai sect Buddhist temple located in Ohara, Sakyo Ward, Kyoto, Kyoto Prefecture, Japan. Its mountain name is Gyōzan (ぎょざん). Its principal deity is Yakushi Nyorai, and Saichō is regarded as its founder. Over the generations, many Tendai head priests have come from here. It is also known as “Sanzen-in Monzeki” and “Kajii Monzeki,” and together with Shoren-in and Myoho-in, it is counted among the three monzeki temples of the Tendai sect.

It’s not the easiest place to reach, we arrived early, and it was a rainy day, so the temple felt especially serene. Aside from a few people having tea indoors, we almost had Sanzen-in to ourselves.

We just left the stroller at the entrance. After that, the baby walked the whole way.

Sitting here really felt like cleansing the mind.

The fresh little shoots were such a beautiful color.

We spotted a place offering free tea, so we went in and sat for a bit. We tried a variety of savory and sweet teas, and they were all delicious, so we bought some. The older lady inside really liked kids, which actually felt pretty rare in Japan.

You can pay to dedicate small Buddha statues here. Some of them even had Chanel ribbons tied on them, which was pretty amusing.

After crossing the bridge, there were several small Buddha statues completely covered in moss.

I really loved Sanzen-in. I loved it so much that on the way out, I even bought a string of beads in the shop for my partner. If I get the chance, I’d love to come back again during fall foliage season.

Sanzen-in → Kifune Shrine

We had originally planned to take a taxi to Kifune Shrine, but Sanzen-in is so remote that we couldn’t get one. No big deal, though—there aren’t that many places that are especially good for a rainy day anyway, so we just took public transit. From the entrance of Sanzen-in, we walked all the way downhill, took a bus from Ohara Station, transferred to the Eizan Electric Railway, and then transferred to another bus to reach Kifune Shrine.

The walk downhill was lovely, with hillsides full of yellow flowers, little streams and waterfalls, and unattended roadside shops. It was a very pleasant walk.

The bus ride was misty and drizzly the whole way, with stretches upon stretches of cherry blossoms outside—too pretty to even think about dozing off. Our kid, meanwhile, most enjoyed counting the stops and checking how many were left until we arrived.

We got off at Takaragaike Station, which is where the train station is. The Eizan Railway also accepts IC cards, though the card reader at the entrance of Takaragaike Station was not very noticeable.

One interesting thing was that at Takaragaike Station, if you wanted to get to another platform, you just crossed directly over the tracks. It was my first time seeing something like that.

When getting off, everyone exits through the front door. At smaller stations, you tap your IC card on the machine behind the driver. At larger stations, the driver covers that machine, and you tap out at the exit gate instead.

Kifune Shrine

After getting off, it was just two more bus stops away by transfer, though you could also walk.

Kifune Shrine is quite small. Its main draws are the evening illuminations and the summer kawadoko riverside dining. The illumination hours didn’t work well for us since we still needed dinner at night, so we chose to visit during the day instead. There were very few tourists, and it felt wonderfully peaceful. If you keep going, you can also visit the Okumiya, but after checking a few guides, we decided to skip it.

There are many restaurants near Kifune Shrine, and we picked one right next to the shrine for lunch. The restaurant was called “Kyo Ajisai,” and we ordered unagi rice and a tofu set. The unagi rice was quite good! The tofu meal was just okay, but we mainly ordered it because my travel companion likes tofu.

At our kid’s request, we bought this chocolate snack.

After lunch, we slowly made our way back down the mountain, planning to wrap up the day’s sightseeing at Ginkaku-ji.

Eizan Railway

I had read that in summer and fall, there is a section of the Eizan Railway near Kifune Shrine that runs through lush forest scenery. But maybe it was the wrong season—although we rode both lines round-trip, we never saw that view. The Eizan Railway also stops at universities and middle schools along the way, so there were lots of students onboard.

There was a vending machine at the station selling limited-edition Eizan Railway souvenirs, but unfortunately they were already sold out.

After getting off, we walked a few hundred meters toward Ginkaku-ji. It was still cloudy at that point.

By the time we reached the area near the Philosopher’s Path, it started to rain, and the rain quickly got heavier.

Philosopher’s Path

The Philosopher’s Path begins at the entrance to the lane leading to Ginkaku-ji. It was, personally, my favorite cherry blossom viewing spot of the entire trip.

My favorite spot was this one: layers of fallen blossoms had gathered downstream in the little creek and drifted slowly with the current. Absolutely gorgeous.

The Silver Pavilion That Didn’t Happen

As we walked uphill along the road to Ginkaku-ji, the rain kept getting heavier, with no sign of letting up. Even with umbrellas, we still got a bit wet, so we had to stop by the roadside to wait it out. With only half an hour left before Ginkaku-ji closed, we decided to come back another day.

Yakiniku Yazawa Kyoto

At that point, there was no need to keep visiting other sights, so we just headed straight to dinner instead.

Waiting for the bus at the entrance to Ginkaku-ji.

Kyoto’s public transit planning seems to have too many constraints, and honestly, it’s not great. Between last year and this year, we spent 8 days and 7 nights in Kyoto. Other than the Eizan Railway, we only took rail transit once; everything else depended on buses. But Kyoto gets so crowded and traffic is so bad that buses not running on schedule feels normal.

Rant over—back to the restaurant. This place is also in Shijo Kawaramachi. Google Maps wasn’t very accurate, and the restaurant was tucked away in a nearby side street. We spent quite a while looking for it.

The painting at the entrance shows Kinkaku-ji. We had a 6:00 reservation that day too, but arrived around 5:30 and were able to go right in and start eating without any issue.

The chopsticks here came in a box. After the meal, they give you a sanitizing wipe so you can clean them and take them home. We thought that was pretty novel. Later on, though, we ate at another place that did the same thing.

Since it was our first time here and we had no idea what to order, we went with an omakase set. The staff grilled everything for us the whole time, and each course came with a different sauce or dip. They even replaced the plate after each serving of meat. And everything was delicious.

Dipping it in raw egg with grated yam combined two of my favorite things in one—delicious.

The egg soup was pretty ordinary, though.

The final rice dish was excellent too, and our child really liked it.

What set this restaurant apart from the yakiniku places we’d tried before was that every course came with a different dipping sauce, so the flavors kept changing and stayed very interesting. Unlike other places, where only the texture of the meat changes, it never started to feel monotonous by the end.

The downside was that the service at our table was only so-so compared to other restaurants in Japan.

That day, we had also arranged to meet friends at this restaurant. Their family was seated in a private room, and we sat down together and chatted for a while, which was really nice.

More on Roku Kyoto

The weather was still bad when we got up in the morning—it kept raining.

There’s one thing I really liked about Roku Kyoto: soft music was always playing in the hallways, which made the peaceful atmosphere feel even stronger.

We took our child for a walk, and there were two small gardens behind the hotel. But it started raining again, and since we didn’t have umbrellas or jackets, we had to give up. For some reason, our room key cards had also stopped working. We couldn’t swipe into the spa to take a look, and when we tried to go back, we couldn’t even open the main door. In the end, we had to ring the bell and ask the doorman to let us in.

Back to breakfast.

That day we ordered an omelet with sausage, and it was still just as stingy.

There wasn’t much change in the buffet selection.

We also ordered the Japanese breakfast, and it had far fewer items too.

At that point, all we could do was enjoy the view.

I heard the hotel pool is quite nice and heated year-round. Unfortunately, we didn’t bring swimsuits at all on this trip.

The artwork in the hallways was also beautiful, and every piece was different.

After that, we checked out first and left our luggage at the front desk, planning to come back for it after our afternoon itinerary. I had originally wanted to see whether they could forward our bags directly to our next hotel—Park Hyatt Kyoto—but that property said they would not accept them. Pretty arrogant, if you ask me.

The checkout process was chaotic, to say the least. The front desk was tied up arguing with a foreign guest. Someone initially helped store my luggage, but then nobody handled the actual checkout. In the end, I had to stop a staff member walking by and ask for help checking out, or I might have just been forgotten in the lobby.

When we came back in the afternoon to pick up our bags, we had a lot of luggage, so I wanted to see whether the bell staff could help call a larger car. It turned out they were just using a ride-hailing app too, which was not much different from doing it myself. That said, the young woman from the bell staff that time was quite warm and had a very good attitude.

Overall, I had mixed feelings about Roku Kyoto. There is very little to criticize about the hard product: it opened during the pandemic, the entire hotel is filled with Japanese aesthetics, and the in-room service was consistently thoughtful.

The weaknesses were also pretty obvious. From elite status recognition to breakfast, the hotel felt stingy in a way that did not match a luxury property. The breakfast itself was frankly underwhelming—nowhere close to the level of the JW Marriott Nara, where we had stayed the previous two nights. Front-desk service was also disorganized, and the bell service was inconsistent.

That day we went to Arashiyama and revisited a yakitori restaurant we had loved last year. I’ll continue with that in the next post.

About the Author

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