LiveMax Resort Sanuki Shionoe Onsen

This resort hotel in the Shionoe hot-spring area has a large indoor bath plus two rotenburo, one framed by forest, the other down a stairway toward a mountain stream. There is a sauna and a cold plunge inside the main bathhouse too, with baths and changing rooms kept separate for men and women. Locals call the water bihada no yu (美肌の湯), a skin-beautifying spring, and bathers often describe it as smooth and slippery rather than sharp. Day-use bathing runs under the on-site brand Sauna Max, and there is a lounge with manga for relaxing after a soak. Shionoe's spring is said to date back some 1,300 years, discovered in the Nara period by the monk Gyoki (行基), and the area has long served as a toji (湯治) recuperative bathing stop in Shikoku.