Park Hyatt Kyoto- Adam's Birthday Weekend -Kenbu Samurai Theater Experience
Every year its a struggle to figure out what to give the guy who has everything for his birthday. My answer to that now is an experience! This year I wanted to do something different, get out of our normal day to day, and of course, do something instagram worthy.
This time to Kyoto, I decided to stay at the Park Hyatt Kyoto, which was an ultra-luxe beautiful hotel built in 2019, right in the heart of Gion.
Gion is Kyoto's most famous geisha district filled with shops, restaurants and ochayas (tea houses). In the video you can see pictures of us walking around surrounded by traditional style wooden "michaya" merchant buildings. Tourists visit in hopes of seeing geishas walking around at night or running errands during the day. We personally have never seen one out and about, but I think thats largely due to covid.
The Park Hyatt is delivering a lovely product for its guests. Since it was built in 2019, its definitely cutting edge when it comes to design and style. The room service menu was quite impressive, offering options for all tastes. They had a great kids menu which is always a bonus when traveling with kids (August ate the kids fish plate AND a kids cheese burger and fries for dinner). I also appreciated that the complimentary waters in the room were in glass bottles, as was everything in the mini bar. I love a commitment to sustainability and lessening a carbon footprint, so getting rid of plastic is a huge step! The products in the bathroom were surprisingly nice! I'm not usually one to notice the bathroom products because I don't really care about it, ha, but they had this super nice tube of orange scented lotion which was different, as well as this huge bar of soap which was probably about 6 inches by 4 inches. It came in a nice box in case you elect to just take it home like I did. Also 2 different kinds of bath salts as well as the shampoo, conditioner and body wash was very nice. When booking with me, my clients will all get a room facing towards the pagoda. This is the standard room with the Pagoda View. The day bed in the room converts nicely to a bed for small children. The staff brings up a mattress topper, pillows and duvet to outfit the bed, and it turns it to a comfortable bed!
Our outside of the box activity for the weekend was a visit to the Samurai Kenbu Theater. Kenbu, literally means 'sword dance' and is one of Japanese traditional performing arts that shows the spirits and the culture of the Samurai. The art portrays the lifestyle of the Samurai through performing to poetry written by samurais while wearing Kimono and Hakama that Samurai wore in Ancient Japan. Our kids (especially Axel) are obsessed with Samurai and Ninjas, so I figured this would be perfect! Adam is also always down to dress up and do things that are different, so I knew this would be entertaining:)
Check out the video from our stay! Thanks to everyone at the Park Hyatt for helping make this special.