Why we stopped booking five-star ryokans

Stars don't travel well to Kyoto. After eleven years of ryokan stays, we'd rather tell you about the two-room place in Kibune where the host still cooks the kaiseki herself.

The thing about a five-star ryokan is that it knows it's a five-star ryokan. Every surface has been lacquered to within an inch of its life, the futon folded at an angle that suggests it was touched by robots, and the kaiseki arrives in courses so timed you half-expect a stage manager in the wings.

We stopped recommending them — at least as the centrepiece of a Japan stay — about four years ago. Not because the quality dropped. It hasn't. But because we realised our guests were coming home talking about something else: the tiny place on the edge of Kibune village, the one with eight rooms and a host who still does the cooking herself, where dinner started when she felt ready and ended when the conversation did.

That's the trip they told their friends about. That's the story that travels.