Inside Hotel Okura Manila’s year of anniversaries, workshops, and one very well-traveled cut of wagyu.
At Newport World Resorts, Hotel Okura Manila has spent 2026 turning its restaurants, workshops, and guest floors into a working demonstration of what seven decades of friendship between the Philippines and Japan can look like in practice. As part of the Okura Nikko Hotels group, with eighty-one properties across twelve countries and regions, the hotel carries its Tokyo lineage into every corner of the building, from the cypress soaking tubs upstairs to the sushi counter at Yamazato downstairs. The hotel marked its own anniversary in April with a monthlong celebration titled Four Years of Timeless Omotenashi, then carried that same attentiveness into July’s Philippines-Japan Friendship Month.
The April celebration opened at Yawaragi, the hotel’s all-day dining restaurant, where the Weekend Kisetsu Buffet moved through the season’s specialties and a daily Afternoon Tea offered a quieter register of sweets and savories.
On its grill nights, Yawaragi turned to kushiyaki and ishiyaki, techniques that reward patience as much as skill. At Yamazato, the hotel’s kaiseki restaurant, seasonal menus were composed with the precision and balance that kaiseki demands, course by course. The caliber showed in the recognitions that followed: Hotel Okura Manila placed among the Top 10 Hotels in the Philippines in the Tatler Best 2026 Awards, and Yamazato earned a place among the MICHELIN Guide 2026 Selected Restaurants.
“Marking this milestone, Hotel Okura Manila celebrates its continued dedication to Omotenashi, the Japanese art of hospitality. Through these offerings, guests are invited to experience the harmony of Japanese elegance and Filipino warmth.”
Jan William Marshall, General Manager of Hotel Okura
The anniversary extended upstairs as well, into rooms built around the same philosophy as the kitchens. The Hanami Room Package paired the hotel’s Hinoki-yu Room and Hinoki-yu Premier, each centered on a cypress soaking tub, with the more contemporary Deluxe Room, and rounded out the stay with a welcome amenity, access to the eleventh-floor SORA outdoor pool, and an in-room Japanese breakfast. General Manager Jan William Marshall framed the season plainly: “Marking this milestone, Hotel Okura Manila celebrates its continued dedication to Omotenashi, the Japanese art of hospitality. Through these offerings, guests are invited to experience the harmony of Japanese elegance and Filipino warmth.”
That same attentiveness carried directly into July, when the hotel dedicated the month to the 70th Philippines-Japan Friendship Month. Yawaragi ran two buffet formats through the weeks, one leaning into international and Japanese favorites, the other built around live cooking stations and carving selections that let guests watch the technique up close. Alongside the dining, the hotel opened its kitchens directly to guests. Senior Pastry Chef Vi Serrano led hands-on sessions in the shaping and pounding behind handmade mochi, a technique bound up in Japanese celebration as much as flavor. Specialty Sushi Chef Ikuma Sato did the same at Yamazato, taking guests through the fundamentals of sushi rather than simply serving it.
The month closed on its highest note, over three evenings built around a single, extraordinary lineage of beef. Yawaragi hosted Arita Wagyu: An Okura Collaboration, sourced from Arita Farm in Miyazaki Prefecture, the product of more than seventy years of dedicated breeding that prizes animal welfare and a low-stress, natural environment as much as marbling. The wagyu arrived freshly decorated: a Gold medal in the Wagyu category and the Large Producer Award, both from the 2025 World Steak Challenge.
Grand Chef Tadashi Sawauchi of Okura Hotels & Resorts, who spent nearly five decades in Japanese cuisine and once led Yamazato at The Okura Tokyo himself, composed the menu with Yamazato Japanese Executive Chef Keiichiro Fujino, Assistant Chef Jumpei Yamanashi in from The Okura Tokyo, Specialty Sushi Chef Ikuma Sato, Specialty Teppan Chef Katsuji Kato, and Yawaragi Senior Pastry Chef Vi Serrano. Sawauchi’s role went beyond the menu itself: across all three evenings, he personally introduced select courses to guests, walking them through the preparation and technique behind each dish himself.
The opening evening welcomed Japan’s then-Ambassador to the Philippines, H.E. Endo Kazuya, and Madame Endo Akiko, alongside representatives from the Embassy of Japan. James Arita, Chief Executive Officer of NIKUJILLE, and Toshiko Arita, Vice President, attended throughout the run, sharing the story of Arita Farm and the philosophy behind how the family raises its cattle. “Seeing guests experience and enjoy our wagyu is our greatest happiness,” Arita told the room, a sentiment that traveled easily from Miyazaki to Manila. The nights that followed drew Newport World Resorts President and Chief Executive Officer Nilo Thaddeus Rodriguez and members of the hotel’s own senior leadership, each evening taking on its own character even as the menu and the craft behind it held steady.
Across the year, the throughline has been consistency rather than spectacle: a Japanese hotel chain, staffed by a rotating cast of chefs pulled directly from Tokyo and Miyazaki, applying the same standard of care to a weekday buffet as to a three-night wagyu collaboration graced by an ambassador. Hotel Okura Manila has not yet confirmed its full calendar for the remainder of 2026, though seventy years of friendship rarely stops mid-year, and Yawaragi’s kitchen, on this evidence, has no plans to either.
