A five-star hotel in Yokohama is a bit of a mystery. If you live in Tokyo, the port city is an easy day trip from almost anywhere in the metropolis. If you’re a tourist visiting from overseas, you’ll almost certainly want to choose a place to stay that’s closer to the sights and sounds of Tokyo itself. For most of these travelers, the only thing they see of Yokohama—while it’s historic and full of attractions of its own—is the view from the window of the shinkansen as they speed toward Kyoto or Osaka.
In this macro-tourism sense, the Kahala Hotel & Resort Yokohama can’t really boast about its location. In almost every other respect, however, it would be justified in doing so.
The Kahala opened in September 2020, during the height of the pandemic and more than two years before tourists are allowed back into the country starting in October 2022, but it still feels like a newly opened hotel. The walk up to reception is unique: a winding corridor with double-height ceilings leads to the elevator, which whisks you up to the 14th floor, where the lobby, bar and lounge, and Italian restaurant are located. The property is the Hawaii-based company’s first attempt at setting up shop in Japan, and if the intended effect of this entrance and emergence from the streets of Yokohama’s Minato Mirai district was to make guests feel like they’ve been transported somewhere else, that’s not entirely unwarranted.
