The Best Places in Japan

A second-floor yakitori counter in Motoazabu built around a single obsession: Tamba-Sasayama chicken, raised locally and taken seriously. The chef pairs skewers with wine rather than beer or sake, and it works, particularly seared breast with Guérande salt and liver glazed with balsamic. The name translates loosely as a ray of sunshine on Darkness Hill, which is either poetic or a lot of pressure for a chicken restaurant.

A basement yakitori counter where the chef's fixation on Kyotamba chicken shapes every skewer. Many pieces are wrapped in skin to draw out the fat's flavor, and the kitchen borrows moves from Japanese cuisine, marinating chicken in kombu broth or folding it into meatballs with takikomi-gohan rice. The cleverest trick: skewers laid over vegetables as they grill, the vegetables quietly soaking up everything dripping from above.

A yakitori counter where the chef ages free-range Kagoshima chickens before they ever hit the grill, coaxing out a depth you don't usually expect from a skewer joint. Beyond the standard salt and tare, he brushes each stick with a fragrant oil he makes himself. The menu weaves in soups and fried chicken dishes between rounds, and closes with rice from earthenware pots or a bowl of chicken broth ramen, which is a graceful way to end.

A U-shaped counter wraps around a live charcoal grill at this yakitori counter near Oshiage, where the kitchen staff call out to each other like a well-drilled team. Chunky skewers of named-breed chicken go over high flame, and the chef leans toward salt over sauce, letting the meat do the talking. The room smells exactly like you want it to, and the skewers disappear faster than you planned for.

Calabashes hang from the rafters here, a nod to the founding chef's habit of drinking sake from gourds, and the counter fills the moment the shop curtain goes up outside. This is a meat kappo, meaning an intimate counter meal built around beef offal and cuts, handled with quiet precision. Staff still call tongue "Zunge" and heart "Herz," a house code that traces back to the German physicians who were once its regulars and apparently never left.

The sign out front says "set menu" in Chinese, which tells you exactly what you're in for. Yiwanshui is a small Chinese home-cooking spot in Nishi-ku where the kitchen keeps the oil light and lets familiar ingredients do the talking. The lunch spread arrives as a colorful nine-dish appetizer platter, the kind of meal that feels restorative rather than showy. The sort of place where regulars stop thinking of it as a restaurant.

Oden is Japan's great underestimated comfort food, and Yoshitaka treats it with the precision of kaiseki, serving each piece one at a time in its own distinct dish. The dashi here draws on Osaka's old kombu-merchant heritage, and toppings like dried kombu shavings or ground sesame nudge familiar flavors somewhere new. The meal closes with ramen or peppered rice in the Edo style, which is a satisfying way to end something that never quite announces itself as a special occasion dinner but quietly is.

Yoshoku, the old Western-influenced Japanese comfort food, gets counter-style kappo treatment here, with the chef cooking and chatting in equal measure. Deep-fried horse mackerel, hamburger steak, and sautéed pork are the crowd pleasers, but the sauces carry the fingerprints of a French kitchen. Ingredients travel in from a Shiga butcher, a Shizuoka fishmonger, and a Kyoto farmer, which is a lot of logistics for what is, lovingly, a plate of comfort food.

The menu arrives handwritten in the chef's own brushwork, which sets the tone for an izakaya that takes its craft seriously without losing the easy warmth the format demands. Seasonal sake pairs naturally with dishes built around small surprises, and shochu comes blended and rested before it reaches you. The vessels are made by artisans, the service is run by a couple who clearly communicate, and the name, meaning glaze and moon, says the rest.

A Sichuan-rooted restaurant in Nogizaka where the restrained seasoning is a philosophy, not an oversight: the chef pulls back on the heat so the farm-direct vegetables can actually say something. The name means "ties" or "connections," and that idea runs through everything, from the producers supplying the kitchen to the warm-hearted front-of-house who makes the room feel like someone's home. Seasonal menus keep honest time with the Japanese calendar.

Sashimi arrives with Daitokuji natto instead of soy sauce, which tells you something about the kitchen's appetite for a quiet left turn. Yuyu is a Japanese dinner restaurant named for a phrase about living free of worldly cares, and the format follows through: à la carte only, no rush. Beef tongue comes in a white miso that resembles a stew, and the final course lets you pick your own ending, rice, noodles, curry, or otherwise.

A ryokan perched above the forested gorge of Kakusenkei, with mineral spring baths that have been in use longer than anyone can politely remember. Yamanaka Onsen is classic Japanese inn country, and Hanamurasaki leans into that without going stiff about it: kaiseki meals but also à la carte, sake pairings, and a tea lounge serving cocktails alongside local Kaga bōcha. Every room faces the trees and the gorge below.

Every room has its own Hokusai print, which is not something most airport hotels can say. Portom is a modern-luxe hotel built into New Chitose Airport's international terminal, so yes, the convenience is extreme, but the experience skews more city-center than transit purgatory. A luxury spa, an exhibition of Edo and Meiji arts and crafts, and two restaurants, one Japanese, one a Japanese-French hybrid, round out a stay that has no business being this considered.

Three converted 18th-century kura, the black-and-white wooden storehouses you see lining Kurashiki's old canal district, make up this eight-room ryokan sitting in the middle of a neighborhood that genuinely looks like it hasn't moved on in centuries. Tatami floors, cloud-soft futons, and multi-course kaiseki dinners served in the room or the restaurant keep the experience classically ryokan, while the living museum just outside the door handles the atmosphere.

A Lawrence Weiner mural runs across the facade of this design hotel in Maebashi, which tells you immediately what kind of stay this is. Architect Sou Fujimoto transformed a 1970s concrete block into something closer to a contemporary art museum with rooms, including a Leandro Erlich installation filling the atrium. A newer green tower shaped after the nearby mountains is its own sculpture. The founder of Japanese eyewear brand JINS envisioned it as a living room for the whole city.

A renovated cluster of historic structures arranged like a small village on the edge of Shizuoka, where the city trails off into the mountains. This inn is deeply traditional in feel, with richly detailed interiors, though one room quietly slips in a pair of Arne Jacobsen swan chairs alongside its antiques. Dining runs from a seasonal Japanese restaurant to a full omakase experience. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels.

A short ferry hop from Hiroshima puts you on Etajima, a quiet island in the Seto Inland Sea where this small ryokan-style hotel sits with rooms overlooking the water or forested hills. Handmade washi art by Eriko Horiki lines the interiors, and the mineral hot spring baths do exactly what you came for. The restaurant runs multi-course meals pairing French technique with local seafood. It's the kind of place where the ferry schedule becomes your whole schedule.

A short bridge connects this Hyatt resort to its own private island off Okinawa's west coast, and the architects made sure every room earns that address, with floor-to-ceiling views pulling your eye straight to open water. The infinity pool sits at the ocean's edge, which makes the poolside cocktail lounge feel less like an amenity and more like a very good idea. Restaurants cover Italian, sushi, teppanyaki, and local Okinawan cooking, so you never have to leave the island, which may be the point.

A modern ryokan on the island of Itsukushima, where many rooms look out over the Seto Inland Sea, Mt. Misen, or both. The interiors mix classic 20th-century European and American design pieces with the handiwork of Japanese artisans, a pairing that somehow feels deliberate rather than indecisive. The restaurant applies French techniques to Setouchi produce and local seafood. A short ferry hop from Hiroshima, which makes it very easy to talk yourself into staying.

The local pottery tradition lands on every table at this ten-room luxury inn near Matsuyama, where Tobe ceramics hold a French-Japanese kitchen's output. The architecture reads as almost Alpine beside its lake, and the spa runs European rather than onsen-style. Rooms are modern-minimalist and face the water. Japan's auberge tradition is younger than the ryokan but finding its footing, and this place is a good argument for it.

An infinity pool framed by tall palms and open to the East China Sea at sunrise is the centerpiece of this luxury resort on Okinawa's northern coastal highlands. Rooms are spacious with parquet floors and furnished balconies facing either the ocean or the forest, and round-the-clock butler service means requests don't wait until morning. A spa, teppanyaki bar, library lounge, and a Mediterranean restaurant using local ingredients round out the picture.

The charred crust here pulls like freshly grilled mochi, which tells you something about where this pizza fits in the world. It's a sit-down pizza restaurant in Ebisu run by a chef who came up in traditional Japanese kitchens and decided neither Naples nor Rome quite covered what he was after. The menu runs from familiar classics to pies topped with katsuobushi or soy-marinated tofu, where the comfort is Japanese even when the shape is Italian.

A suite-only resort on Okinawa's quieter western coast, where breakfast and brunch run until 2pm and the infinity pool technically never closes. Every suite comes with a private terrace and an in-room sauna, and the lounges stock snacks and drinks around the clock, so the ambition of leaving for the day is always negotiable. With only 54 rooms, it stays unhurried in a way that larger resorts tend to promise and then quietly fail to deliver.

A fortress-like wall hides this resort from the road, which is exactly the point: inside, gardens, villas, and low-slung structures open toward an unspoiled stretch of west coast beach. The villas blend sharp contemporary design with traditional Okinawan craft, all facing the ocean. What the kitchen does with the overlap between Okinawan and Sicilian cooking is either a stretch or a revelation, and you'll have time to decide between snorkeling, diving, and Ryukyu Karate lessons.

A feudal lord's retreat that became a count's home, then a traditional inn, Ohana sits on a 23,000-square-meter estate designated Japan's only National Place of Scenic Beauty where overnight stays are permitted. Kaiseki dinners unfold in former family quarters above Shoto-en Garden, cypress soaking tubs wait in the guest rooms, and original Tachibana ceramics and textiles survived the renovation. The 100-tatami-mat hall catches morning light in the way old buildings seem to have planned for.

Villas on the Okinawan coast where every unit comes with a private pool and a butler who works the same hours you do. Six sizes, none of them modest, and the upper-tier options add a hot tub to the arrangement. The fine-dining restaurant runs a charcoal-grill menu with a dress code, the poolside grill does not, and a full spa handles the rest. The East China Sea views make the decision to stay another night embarrassingly easy.

Five suites, no restaurant, no spa, and that is entirely the point. This ultra-modern boutique hotel sits on a cliff above the East China Sea, its white rectangular facade designed by Shinichi Ogawa & Associates to get out of the way of the view. Each suite opens through oversized sliding glass doors onto a private terrace with an open-air bath and infinity pool. The interiors are all-white and minimalist, leaving the ocean to do the decorating.

Kouri Island reaches the main island by a single bridge over water so green it looks filtered, and Baton Suite sits right at that edge. It's a small suite-only resort where every room faces the East China Sea, either across the bridge or down into a tropical garden and pool. Deep soaking tubs, daybeds at floor-to-ceiling windows, and some rooms with kitchens. The pace here is essentially legislated by geography.

A 12-room auberge in the Yatsugatake Mountains that looks, improbably, like it was airlifted from Paris and set down facing mountain peaks instead of the Left Bank. Rooms tuck under mansard rooflines with the proportions that a rural setting makes possible, and the in-house restaurant keeps a cellar of 2,000 French bottles. The owner built it as a tribute to French hospitality, and the result is a hotel that has no obvious counterpart anywhere in Japan.

Saijo sits at the foot of Mount Ishizuchi and the groundwater practically bubbles up through the pavement, which explains why a University of Tokyo eco-project chose it for Japan's first zero-energy hotel. The building is all angular rooflines and open-air walkways, rooms kept spare with blonde wood and pale green tile, beds on raised platforms. Shared coworking space, a café, and riverside gardens round things out for a hotel that takes its minimalism as seriously as its environmental brief.

A modern design hotel on the shores of Lake Biwa, L'Hotel du Lac looks almost aggressively contemporary against its postcard countryside setting. Inside, the aesthetic is stripped back without feeling cold, and the rooms have a stillness that no amount of scented candles can manufacture. Villa suites add lofted ceilings and a country-house feel, there's a pool and outdoor baths, and the after-dinner lounge stocks hundreds of varieties of shochu.

A ryokan in one of Japan's quieter hot spring cities, Tendo-so gives every room its own private onsen bath, which removes a certain amount of the morning negotiation around the public pools. The seven detached cottages, called hanare, are modeled on traditional tea-ceremony structures and lean fully into classical Japanese design, while the main house runs a little more contemporary. A kaiseki dinner is served each evening, with grilled eel holding the place of honor.

A three-minute walk from the ferry pier at Uno Port, this sleek hotel sits at the departure point for the Setouchi island-hop, which means guests are either here with a ferry to catch or have decided the spa's indoor and outdoor onsen baths are reason enough to stay. The rooms lean modern and calm, the restaurant choice splits between classic Japanese and modern French, and the Seto Inland Sea is right outside.

The vineyard rows run right up to your door at this winery villa tucked into the northern foothills of Mount Fuji, where the pitch is that you don't just drink the wine, you help make it. Guests can join seasonal vineyard work, tour the terroir by e-bike, or simply sit with a small-lot bottle from grapes grown a few steps away. It's a working agricultural stay as much as a hotel, and the landscape does most of the decorating.

Nine old townhouses on a portside fishing town have been stitched together into a small, intimate hotel, with interiors that lean modern Japanese while the kitchen leans unmistakably French. Celebrity chef Tateru Yoshino, a veteran of Japan's top French tables, applies classical technique to Fukui seafood. The place manages to feel both genuinely local and quietly European, which is a harder trick than it sounds.

A hot tub overlooking forested hillsides sets the tone at this mountain bed and breakfast on the quiet edge of Shizuoka City. The architecture leans modern-rustic in a way that feels earned rather than styled, and the family owners live next door, which explains both the warmth and the food. Breakfast comes with the room; a private dinner can be arranged, and the owners come from a culinary background, so that offer is worth taking seriously.

Mount Fuji fills the balcony view at this design-forward resort hotel at the mountain's base, where the pitch is "luxury self-hospitality": you get a full kitchen, a private sauna in many suites, and the sense that no one is hovering. Bunk rooms handle families, a jacuzzi penthouse handles groups with ambitions, and dogs get their own rooftop run. The café-lounge BASE445 pulls everyone back together with local food and craft drinks when the sauna cycling winds down.

Suites here come with en suite kitchens and, in some cases, private plunge pools, which is the hotel's way of telling you to settle in and ignore your schedule. This wellness resort on Shodoshima sits right on the Seto Inland Sea, with hot springs piped into the spa and an infinity pool at the water's edge. Restaurant edén handles dinner if self-catering feels like too much ambition, leaning on local Setouchi ingredients.

A white-walled hotel on a hill above Mikawa Bay, its green copper roof shaped to read like a castle from the water. The Art Deco lobby chandeliers and original elevator details have been preserved, and a hexagonal 1930s annex plus an older sukiya-shoin wooden structure sit on the grounds as cultural properties. Babe Ruth slept here once, which the hotel remembers in considerable detail. Takeshima Island sits just across the water.

Every one of the 18 rooms at this small resort hotel in Gora comes with its own curated bookshelf, chosen to match the character of that particular room. The open-air hot spring bath is private too, so the idea seems to be: soak, then read something you'd never have picked yourself. A publisher and a book distributor built it together, less for dedicated readers than for people who have quietly stopped.

Every room at this large resort in the hills above Hakone comes with its own private open-air onsen, which makes the public baths, already spectacular, feel almost redundant. Too big to call itself a ryokan but borrowing everything appealing about one: forest trails, mountain seclusion, seasonal Japanese cuisine, and the sound of waterfalls doing most of the therapeutic work before any massage is booked.

Private wood-timbered bungalows tucked into the Hakone forest, each one stocked with a kitchenette, a fireplace, and its own mineral hot spring, so you never have to negotiate with another guest over the onsen schedule. This resort is designed for switching off, and the house supplies coloring books and board games to prove it means this literally. Hiking and cycling trails are nearby when the fireplace loses its argument.

A boutique hotel on the Haya River that looks like it should be a ryokan and has quietly decided not to be. Every room comes with its own spring-fed onsen bath, but the layout is Western, the furniture is elevated, and the art on the walls is contemporary even when it depicts local scenes. The public baths feature a screen cycling through visual art, and the restaurant runs international comfort food sourced from within ten kilometers.

An international luxury resort tucked into Gora, a hot spring town in the forested hills near Mount Fuji, the Hyatt Regency Hakone sits where ryokans typically rule, and holds its own with Western rooms, tatami suites, mountain balconies, and jetted tubs. The onsen baths are the draw, fed by actual hot springs, and the ancient Hakone-Jinja shrine is a short wander away. Commit to the property: this is proper resort territory, not a hotel with a good neighborhood.

A lakeside ryokan in Kochi where the audiophile-grade sound system gets the same thoughtful attention as the natural hot spring onsen. Rooms are sparse and uncluttered, framing the greenery outside like a considered composition, and the kitchen runs on freshly harvested local ingredients. The whole place orbits a single idea about living naturally, taken more seriously here than that word usually warrants.

Behind a classic two-story machiya facade in Takayama's preserved old town sits an urban ryokan that quietly bends the rules of the form. The interiors run modern and spare rather than ornate, but the geothermal spring still feeds both communal baths and in-room onsen, keeping things grounded. The restaurant works through seasonal local ingredients with the usual ryokan seriousness. About two hours from Nagoya, deep in the mountains.

Eleven suites arranged like a village deep in Okinawa's subtropical Yanbaru Forest, where the concrete is bare brutalist and the floors are warm hardwood, and somehow the two get along fine. This small luxury resort sits in the mountainous north of the Motobu Peninsula, far enough from anywhere to feel like a genuine escape. The spa leans into the surrounding greenery, and the restaurant turns local produce into fine dining without making a fuss about it.

A resort in the Hakone hills where the pull is immediate: guests tend to bypass everything and head straight for their private, spring-fed onsen. Rooms lean into curved lines and natural wood to feel genuinely cocooning, and the upper-tier options add open-air baths and balconies. It's the kind of self-contained stay where the outside world requires active effort to remember. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels.

Five suites in the Hakone highlands, each with its own private spa facilities and views of forested hills that do most of the convincing before you've unpacked. This small, renovated inn keeps a vast garden, hot-spring onsen, and traditional herbal soaks from an older life, updated just enough to feel cared for rather than preserved. The kind of place where slow-living stops being a concept and becomes a schedule.

A two-story wooden townhouse in Takayama's old town, rented out whole so the place is yours alone. Clay walls, earthen floors, shoji screens, tatami mats, and a cypress bath looking onto a quiet courtyard set the tone. The neighboring Kusakabe merchant house is a designated cultural property, and Taniya reads as its living annex, built by the same local craftsmen using the same old techniques. The tea room and artisan-furnished reading room come with the keys.

The preserved door of the old Ichijo branch marks the entrance here, a quiet signal that Kamazaki Onsen has been in the same family's hands for an almost unreasonable stretch of time. This ryokan-style inn has eleven rooms, each with a terrace and open-air bath over the river. Meals arrive privately, often outside, with seasonal food from the surrounding region. The sound of water is more or less constant.

Every room at this traditional Japanese inn comes with its own private open-air onsen bath and a dedicated tea-brewing setup, which tells you exactly what the town of Ureshino is about. The steam room adds a scent of local tea leaves, which feels less like a spa gimmick and more like the point. A restaurant leans into Saga Prefecture ingredients, and the team runs tea ceremonies for guests who want the full immersion.

Kouri Island is connected to Okinawa's mainland by a single long bridge, which does a good job of filtering out anyone who isn't serious about doing nothing. Yawn Yard is a boutique hotel of angular blonde-wood villas scattered across a forested hill above the emerald sea. Private outdoor dining areas, optional infinity plunge pools, ocean views, and a house policy of zero screens. The rooms are pale-wood and minimalist, and the silence is the amenity.

Volcanic vents still hissing through ancient rock set the backdrop for this 27-room ryokan in Unzen, where the mountain has drawn everyone from Shingon pilgrims to Meiji-era expats looking for dance parties and golf. The gender-separated spa runs across multiple floors, meals arrive privately in your room, and Christian martyrdom sites and old quasi-national park trails sit just outside the door.

A traditional ryokan in the hot spring town of Yugawara, Fukiya is built in Sukiya style, the same restrained aesthetic you see in old teahouses, with seven configurations of tatami rooms to choose from. Private open-air baths sit alongside communal hot springs fed by the town's thermal waters. The kitchen runs a monthly kaiseki menu that turns with the seasons. Tokyo is about an hour away by train, which is close enough that this counts as an actual escape.

Every suite faces the peak of Mount Fuji directly, and each has its own open-air private bath in case you need somewhere to contemplate it. This ryokan near the mountain runs on classic form: tatami rooms, an onsen, and seasonal Japanese meals presented with the kind of ceremony that makes dinner feel like a ritual. The design skews modern but feels rooted, never gimmicky, and the service is the quiet, anticipatory kind that makes you forget what you needed before you asked.

A ryokan that happens to be a ship. Guntu is a floating hotel that sails three routes across the Seto Inland Sea, and its 17 wood-paneled cabins were designed by an architect whose usual brief is Japanese private homes, which explains why they feel so lived-in and calm. Three restaurants cover sushi, grilled fish, and yoshoku, a tea master runs the lounge, and hinoki cypress bathtubs and saunas handle the rest.

A stream runs through the property, wild birds nest in the forest outside your window, and some floors are heated by the geothermal spring below your feet. This ryokan-inspired resort sits about an hour from Tokyo in the hills around Karuizawa, built around an onsen and a small lake, with contemporary villas that manage to feel genuinely quiet. The spa, the kaiseki dining room, and most of the guest terraces all face the trees.

The bones of this luxury boutique hotel are those of an 1908 tsarist consulate, all red brick and period detail in the Consulate Wing, with a sleek Wellness Wing bolted on alongside. Every suite comes with a private sauna, and a shared wellness space adds a jacuzzi and plunge pool. The kitchen runs from French fine dining to a sushi counter focused on local Hokkaido seafood, with a cocktail bar rounding things out.

At the foot of a volcano, which really does set the mood, this boutique hotel in the Karuizawa mountains threads Japanese architectural detail through a quietly stylish international frame. The 155 rooms lean into the forest setting, some with garden patios, some with woodland views from the tub. A Thai-style spa by HARNN handles relaxation; the single all-day restaurant, Kagaribi, handles meals with, of all things, an Italian accent.

The only Keith Haring museum in the world is here, not in New York, tucked into the foothills of the Yatsugatake Mountains. The boutique hotel next door, designed by the same Japanese architect, has just six rooms named for natural elements, minimalist wood-and-stone interiors, private balconies over the forest, and hot-spring baths open to the night sky. The Michelin Guide selects it among its hotels.

A ten-story ryokan sounds like a contradiction, but Villa Rakuen makes it work by treating every floor as an extension of Awaji Island itself. Tatami rooms, wood-and-stone open-air baths, and private Japanese gardens just off the suites keep the tradition intact. The Hoshi rooms come with a cutaway gazebo roof for stargazing, and a top-floor celestial balcony handles the rest. Seafood and produce from the island's farms, which supply the Imperial household, fill the meals.

Anime figurines and actual artwork line the walls of this two-floor pizzeria in quiet Eifukucho, a neighborhood that feels a world away from central Tokyo. The chef, Massimo, has spent decades making pizza in Japan and the pies here run generously sized, which is its own kind of statement in this city. Italian wines and a full menu of pasta, secondi, and desserts round things out for anyone who arrives hungry enough to go the distance.

A lobby LED installation and DJ booth shift colors and sounds with the season, which sets the tone for what this Niseko ski resort hotel is trying to do. Rooms have wide picture windows onto the mountain, and there's an onsen for after the slopes or after the summer hike. The restaurant leans on Hokkaido produce and Japanese sweets alongside broader international cooking. Snow brings the crowds, but the hotel is built for all four seasons.

Tucked between temples in Sakyo Ward, this Neapolitan pizza spot is run by a chef who trained in Naples and sources his ingredients strictly from Campania. The pies run larger than the Japanese norm, soft and light in the way that only a wood-fired dough done right can manage. The room is small and familiar, the staff attentive, and an Italian beer alongside is not a bad idea. It ranked 36th in 50 Top Pizza Asia-Pacific.

Snow Peak is the upscale Japanese outdoor brand whose sprawling Niigata headquarters doubles as a resort, designed by Kengo Kuma. Private villa suites sit inside ornamental wooden ceilings that soften Kuma's trademark minimalism, and the onsen-style bath complex looks out through floor-to-ceiling glass at the surrounding landscape. Guests tend to own at least one titanium camping mug before they arrive.

A converted salt warehouse on a citrus island along the Shimanami Kaido cycling route, SOIL Setoda folds a small hotel into a working community hub, sharing the site with a café and roaster, a waterfront restaurant, and a bento shop. Rooms face either the channel or the old shopping arcade, so you're less a tourist looking in than a temporary resident. Workshops and island producers do the rest; the pace here is Setoda's, not a hotel's.

A hillside ryokan-adjacent retreat above Beppu where the architecture reads modern gallery as much as inn, with a serious collection of contemporary art hanging throughout. The spring-fed baths and the kitchen's Italian-leaning menu sit alongside traditional Japanese hospitality without any obvious friction. From the rooms, you get Beppu Bay on one side and the city's famous geothermic hot springs, the so-called "eight hells," on the other.

A bamboo forest wraps this 30-room boutique hotel so completely that the city outside feels like a rumor. Rooms go clean-lined and pale-wood minimalist, some with outdoor terraces, others with indoor Jacuzzis, which is a decision you'll spend approximately four minutes agonizing over at booking. Three restaurants, a lobby lounge, and a summer pool fill out the picture for a property that manages to feel serene without trying too hard about it.

An Italian chef running a proper Italian restaurant in snowy Tomakomai, and yet the pizza is built around Hokkaido's local produce rather than any nostalgic recreation of the homeland. The dough is soft and the menu runs well past pizza into pasta, secondi, and Italian desserts, with a wine list that spans the whole peninsula. It ranked 49th on 50 Top Pizza's Asia-Pacific list, which is an unexpected thing to say about a town famous for its snowfall.

The steeply peaked rooflines here weren't designed to look dramatic; they have to clear Hokkaido's legendary snowfall. Andaru Collection Niseko is a villa resort in the mountains outside Niseko, its two-story standalone villas shaped by Ainu architectural tradition with an accidental kinship to Alpine A-frames. An Italian restaurant called Ultimo sits under its own peaked roof. Summer hiking exists for those who find powder skiing too relaxing.

A ski-country hotel in Niseko that named itself after the Weisshorn, a shuttered resort now beloved by backcountry and cat-skiing crowds, which tells you something about the clientele. Eight floors of rooms look out over the Niseko ranges and Mount Yotei, and the gap between a minimalist Superior room and an onsen suite fed by actual spring water is considerable. The wellness center has its own onsen, and dinner can go as formal or as low-key as the day demands.

Five suites, a butler for each one, and an en suite soaking bath that competes with the volcanic peak visible from the window. Gekkoju Yufuin is a villa-scale retreat on the quiet edge of Yufu, close enough to the town's streets to explore but tucked away enough to ignore them entirely. The cuisine fuses Japanese and French traditions, and the furnishings lean Western and quietly lavish in a way that stops just short of absurd.

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.

You can ride your bike straight through the front door, which tells you everything about this hotel's commitments. Housed in the Onomichi U2 warehouse complex on Hiroshima's waterfront, Hotel Cycle keeps the double-height ceilings and industrial bones while warming the rooms up enough to actually sleep in. The hooks for hanging your bike are standard issue. Outside, the Shimanami Kaido path connects Honshu and Shikoku across six islands, which is the whole point.

Every room at Kannawaen comes with its own outdoor bathtub fed by the hotel's completely natural hot springs, which tells you exactly what kind of stay this is. The ryokan-style property sits in Beppu, the biggest hot spring resort in western Japan, so the city takes bathing seriously and so does the hotel. Rooms run from Western doubles to traditional futon layouts, all with cypress wood tubs inside. Two restaurants and spa treatments round things out for anyone who surfaces long enough.

The sawtooth rooflines of the freestanding cottages are the first sign that this small wellness resort inside Unzen-Amakusa National Park is not following anyone's rulebook. Rooms and cottages are fitted with modernist furniture and warm textures, all oriented toward Mount Unzen and the Ariake Sea. A sauna complex, outdoor Jacuzzi, and infinity pool round things out, while birds, quite literally the ones that gave the place its name, cut across the sky above.

A ryokan-meets-Italian-auberge is a concept that should not work and yet here we are. This small, centuries-old family estate in Nishi Izu has been converted into a handful of spacious suites and a villa, each nearly self-contained, with en suite spring-fed baths. An Italian restaurant and a French pastry bakery with house-made gelato round things out, because apparently halfway measures weren't considered.

Every room at this ryokan-adjacent retreat in Asama Onsen comes with its own private spring-fed bath, which freed up the old communal soaking hall to become a restaurant, café, bakery, bookshop, and shop. The bones of the original inn, an old-school fixture of this resort town, survived the redesign even if what stands now looks quietly modern. The name translates loosely as "ten stories," referring to chapters of history rather than floors.

Every room at this ryokan-style inn on the Seto Inland Sea comes with its own open-air onsen bath pointed straight at a trio of green islands. The port town of Tomonoura was part of the inspiration for Ponyo, which tells you something about how the light sits on the water here. Rooms blend contemporary comfort with traditional Japanese touches, and the restaurant leans into local seafood.

The top-floor lobby lounge at night, with the Uragami and Nakashima rivers merging below and Mount Inasa framed in the distance, is a persuasive argument for booking high. This hotel sits inside the renovated Nagasaki JR station complex on the hill above town, so the views come with the convenience of arriving. Rooms are clean and spare, which makes sense when the panorama outside is doing most of the decorating.

A rooftop onsen on the twelfth floor, spring-fed and infinity-edged, with the Pacific rolling out below. This Michelin Selected hotel in Atami keeps everything else equally calm: rooms done in a modern take on classic Japanese style, paper screens and understated finishes, none of the maximalist resort theatre you'd find elsewhere. Five restaurants and bars means you can probably avoid leaving, which, given the views, is the idea.

A modern ryokan in the Niseko highlands, with Mount Yotei as a permanent fixture outside every window. All 18 rooms, whether tatami or Western, come with a private spring-fed onsen on the terrace, which makes the cold months feel like a very reasonable trade. The kitchen runs a seasonal menu built on Hokkaido produce year-round, not just ski season, since the landscape is persuasive in July too.

Every room at this small coastal resort looks straight out over Sagami Bay, and each one has its own private hot spring bath so you never have to queue for the thermal waters Atami has been famous for forever. Thirteen rooms split between Western-style suites and two traditional sukiya-zukuri suites keep things quiet, while the restaurant turns local ingredients into French dishes with the bay as backdrop. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels.

A modern ryokan at the tip of the Bōsō Peninsula where every room, original building or tower addition, comes with a sea view, a balcony, and a private open-air spring-fed bath. The public onsen, perched 50 meters above the water, looks straight up Tokyo Bay. The seafood-focused teppanyaki restaurant sits inside what feels like a clearing in a forest. A Michelin Selected Hotel, and a reasonable place to spend a few nights pretending Tokyo doesn't exist.

Three natural hot spring baths face the forested mountainsides of Yatsugatake National Park, open around the clock and framed by nothing but trees. This classic ryokan, half an hour outside Matsumoto, keeps its rooms spare by design: tatami, shoji screens, and floor-to-ceiling views do all the work. Some rooms add a private open-air onsen bath. A shuttle runs to and from the station, which is two and a half hours from Tokyo and feels like considerably more.

Each suite faces the Pacific with nothing between you and open water except a cliff, which is either thrilling or clarifying depending on your mood. This small clifftop resort in Atami combines hot spring heritage with a nine-seat dinner counter where the cooking runs French in technique and Shizuoka in spirit. The waves are audible all night, which Atami's old hot spring crowd would have considered the whole point.