Hacienda Vison Hotel

Six rooms, each dressed around a different artist or designer, inside a building whose clean geometric lines borrow from southern Spanish farmhouse tradition without any of the thatch. It's a boutique hotel in the Vison complex in Mie, and the central kitchen, where guests cook alongside a local chef or simply watch, is a genuine draw. The surrounding flower and vegetable garden softens the modernist edges, and Ise Jingu Shrine is close by.

One honor, in evidence: