Shimayado Mari

Shimayado Mari is a hot spring inn set along a lane lined with soy sauce breweries in the Noma district of Shodoshima Island, Kagawa Prefecture, an area known as Hishio-no-Sato ("the village of soy sauce"). The inn began as a small guesthouse run by the previous proprietress, Rie Mato, and was later taken over and renovated by her son, Yasuyuki Mato, who restored the early-Showa-era wooden buildings -- registered as a national Tangible Cultural Property -- reusing beams, pillars, and old barrel timber from former soy sauce warehouses. Rooms were added gradually over the years, bringing the inn to its current eight guest rooms.

The inn draws on its own private source, Rie Onsen, an alkaline simple hot spring rich in metasilicic acid. The water is colorless and odorless and known locally as a "beauty bath," and every bath at the inn runs on a source-fed, non-recirculated (kake-nagashi) supply. The pH and source temperature are not publicly disclosed, but guests consistently describe the water as silky on the skin and deeply warming.

All eight guest rooms come with their own private hot spring bath fed directly from the source, and the inn additionally offers two reservable communal baths: Ishi-no-yu, an indoor stone bath opening onto a semi-open-air bath, and Take-no-yu, an open-air bath surrounded by a bamboo grove. The property is accommodation-only, with rates starting from around 41,000 yen per person for one night with two meals. Check-in is from 14:00 and check-out by 10:00.