Kochi Tosa Onsen Johen

Kochi Tosa Onsen Johen is a thermal facility in Kochi City, the capital of Kochi Prefecture on the Pacific coast of Shikoku, the birthplace of Sakamoto Ryoma, the visionary samurai-turned-revolutionary whose political vision and personality helped engineer the Meiji Restoration of 1868 and who has been celebrated as Japan's most popular historical figure in multiple national polls, with his hometown preserving his memory in statues, a dedicated museum, and a lively craft beer and whisky distillery scene that honors his legacy of cultural openness to the outside world. Kochi City is also famous for its spectacular Sunday Hirome Market, Japan's most vibrant indoor food market where vendors of Kochi's extraordinary local cuisine — fresh katsuobushi (skipjack tuna) beaten tableside in the tosa no katsutataki style, whole-roasted Pacific saury, and the extraordinary vegetable and seafood abundance of Japan's most biodiversity-rich Pacific prefecture — create a carnival of local food culture. The chloride thermal spring waters here provide comfortable bathing in a city of remarkable historical personality, literary legacy in the novels of Saka no Ue no Kumo, and culinary vitality that makes Kochi one of Japan's most characterful and genuinely local prefectural capitals.