Hotel Seira Shimanto

Hotel Seira Shimanto is a small, plain hotel on a hill above the Shimanto River in western Kochi, with fourteen rooms and its own hot-spring baths. The women's bath is finished in black marble and the men's in marble, and both look out over the river below. The men's side has a dry sauna and the women's a mist sauna running at full humidity. Day visitors can use the baths too, and the restaurant serves ayu and freshwater shrimp caught in the Shimanto when booked ahead. The hotel is known among guests for stargazing nights: on clear evenings there's a telescope session, and the sky here is dark enough to watch from the building itself even without joining in.