7 Best Hotels in Shikoku, Japan

A splurge but absolutely worth it, this high-class ryokan behind the Dogo Onsen bathhouse delivers the royal treatment. The guest rooms are extremely spacious and offer views of the hot spring and the city, vistas you can also enjoy from your private balcony while soaking in a wooden tub in water drawn from the springs. The Japanese-style rooms have wooden floors and tatami sections, but instead of futons there are Western-style mattresses. The optional meals, inspired by French haute cuisine, are in private rooms in the restaurant downstairs.

The owner of this small ryokan in Honmura, which has three Japanese-style rooms and one guesthouse, spent decades in France and Morocco before returning to Naoshima to turn his family's 17th-century home into an inn. In the main house are exquisitely decorated tatami rooms, though the sliding screen doors aren't as quiet as many travelers would like. For more privacy ask for the annex guesthouse, which has its own kitchen and sleeps up to four people. Meals are available.

A top choice for a luxury ryokan experience, Hanajyukai overlooks city and sea from a flower-covered mountainside. In typical ryokan fashion, most rooms are fully tatami, but some also incorporate wood flooring, and there are rooms with beds (not futon) tastefully incorporated into the traditional design; book one of the "designers rooms" for that. Or splurge on a "rotemburo-tsuki" room, if you want a private hot-spring bath. Dinners are classic kaiseki with French twists, although no-meal plans are available if you want to cut costs or eat out in Takamatsu. The scenic rooftop spa will melt your travel stress away. The inn is a 10-minute taxi ride from the city center.

The private onsen bathtubs on each room's balcony here have breathtaking views of the unspoiled valley below. The Japanese-style rooms are luxurious. Follow Route 45 as it curves right and transforms back into the old Route 32; make a left just after the decrepit pink Kazurabashi Hotel, and the lush Iya Bijin will come up on your right.

This traditional inn just up the road from Kazura-bashi has spacious rooms, an outdoor hot-spring bath, and unobstructed views of the valley, but the home-style feast you're served at dinner and breakfast are what you'll write home about. Two meals are included in most rates, but breakfast-only and dinner-only options are also available at a much lower rate.

Perched on the edge of a steep ravine above the Iya River, this upscale hot-springs inn provides absolute luxury in the middle of nowhere. Iya Onsen is one of Japan's three "secret" baths (if you ask locals where the other two are, nobody seems to know). Reasons to stay here include the sweeping views from most guest rooms, the lavish meals, and the riverside hot-spring bath accessed by cable car. When the mist rises from the valley in the early morning, it really does feel like you're in a hidden world. A hotel bus picks up overnight guests from Oboke Station at 3:10 pm (reservation needed).

Just a three-minute walk from Miyanoura ferry terminal you'll find this hidden little gem where the hostess, Yukiko-san, carefully attends to her guests and makes great food. The old villa-turned-ryokan is a wooden structure, and the rooms are traditional Japanese with tatami mats and sliding doors. The per-person price includes both breakfast and dinner.