The Best Hotels Near edit x seven Setouchi Shodoshima, by the Record
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A Tadao Ando-designed resort on a tiny Inland Sea island where the hotel and the museum are the same building, and Monet, Pollock, and James Turrell are essentially your neighbors. Four architecturally distinct buildings hold the rooms, each offering a slightly different relationship to the art and the landscape. It holds a Michelin 2 Keys. Rates start high and the island is remote, but no budget-conscious operation hangs five Monet water lilies in a Giverny-inspired garden.
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Every suite at this ryokan on the art island of Naoshima comes with its own open-air bath, which sets the tone rather well. Earthen walls, low futons, tatami mats, and handmade paper screens keep things quietly beautiful. The building doubles as a gallery, and the bar and minimalist firepit pull in the art-world crowd that arrives for the installations and stays for the sake. Holds a Michelin Key.
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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.
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A dark timber façade marks this 13-room boutique hotel in Kurashiki's Bikan Historical Quarter, where the building started life as a kimono merchant's home and still feels like it carries that weight. Courtyard gardens and hand-finished materials run through both the historic and newer wings, the whole thing pulled together by a quiet, minimal aesthetic that treats silence as an amenity rather than an oversight.
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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.
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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.