Hiiragiya Ryokan in Kyoto: “This is one of the most extraordinary hotels I’ve ever stayed in. At once simple and amazingly complex, it made me completely rethink the notion of luxury and space and how they are perceived by different cultures. Built in 1861, the building’s relatively simple systems of sliding doors, translucent transom screens, fusuma (panels of heavy, opaque paper), shoji screens, and wooden-framed glass panels can be manipulated to adjust, completely, one’s perception of space by providing scale or curtailing the view.”