Mogana

Stayed at Mogana with my wife while on a trip in Kyoto. Excellent hotel with a couple of footnotes: The Good: * Nice hotel in a quaint part of Kyoto. * Clean, streamlined, with monotone colors (well done); hotels feels uncluttered (bare essentials when it comes to furniture, which augments to the overall zen/serene feel of this boutique hotel). Stylish boutique hotel with little to fault. * Excellent breakfast delivered to your room. Top quality ingredients and presentation. * Top notch staff, attentive, caring, perfectionist and accommodating. * Almost everything in room controlled by an electronic notepad, including room service, temperature… easy to use. * Nice bathroom. The Bad: Nothing bad, but want to set expectations in footnotes. Footnotes: Mogana is a quiet hotel meaning no bars/restaurants. Technically there is 1 small bar that serves drinks, but it is not the traditional bar you’d find it most hotels so I wouldn’t really count it as a bar. However, room service is available and serves only a few dishes (non-western) and small selection of drinks. But, as I mentioned earlier, food at Mogana is fresh and EXCELLENT, so quality more than makes up for selection. Taxis in Kyoto had a hard time finding this hotel, including other locations. When/if in a taxi headed to Mogana or elsewhere, make sure to have the name of the hotel/location AND address handy to show the driver. Kyoto has countless small streets. Japanese drive well, BUT share streets with pedestrians in those tiny streets. Most are small and narrow and look like small alleys by western standards, but are streets. When walking make sure you maintain situational sweetness of traffic. Drivers will avoid you, but often with a few inches to spare. In other words, when walking, if you’re doing to change direction, turn, move…make sure you maintain situational awareness to avoid getting hit by a car. Didn’t see any issues which is probably due to drivers/pedestrians playing by the same rules.