This tatami-clad noodle joint used to be just a confectionary shop - but that was nearly 600 years ago. Since then, Honke Owariya has developed and rigorously maintained a reputation for having the best soba noodles in Kyoto. In such a strong field, it’s clear that experience helps.

As with many chain hotels in Japan, the Hyatt Regency transcends its corporate anonymity to produce something special and quintessentially Japanese. Nondescript from the outside, the lobby combines timeless international design with a distinctly Kyoto sensibility.

We don’t know anyone who would complain about waking up to a view of an Emperor’s garden. At Noku Kyoto, it’s not just possible but probable. This boutique hotel is centrally located, right next to the Kyoto Imperial Palace (where lay the seat of Japanese power for over a thousand years) and local art enriches each of its spacious 81 rooms.

In the 8th century the first shrines were built here to Inari, the Shinto god of fertility and agriculture. Since then, the mountain trails have become home to thousands upon thousands of vermilion-coloured shrine gates (or torii) that beckon the traveller upward to the shrines to pay tribute.

Constructed in 1397 as a retirement home for the Shogun and then turned into a temple by his son, Kinkaku-ji (or ‘The Golden Pavilion’) remains one of the most spectacular sights in all Japan. Each of the temple’s storeys is a different architectural style - shinden, samurai and zen - but all three are coated from head to toe in brilliant gold leaf.