A trip to a ryokan is really a trip into a different way of seeing the world, a different sense of space and time and self. Not just because you wash (as everywhere in Japan) before you get into the tub (seated on a wooden stool, and slopping water over different parts of your body from a pail); not only because you’re eating with chopsticks and sleeping on the floor on a rice-husk pillow. But mostly because a ryokan is an initiation into the classic principles of Japanese design, which tell us that a suggestion is always more persuasive than a statement, and opulence consists mostly of finding out how … Continue reading Pico Iyer