Hidden Gems Across Japan
1,610 spots
Shikoku Aquarium
The Shikoku Aquarium opened in 2020 at Utazu on the Inland Sea, directly under the Great Seto Bridge, and it organises i…
Awashima
Awashima is fifteen minutes by boat from Suda in Mitoyo and has a pale green wooden building at the harbour that was Jap…
Nakazu Bansho-en
Nakazu Bansho-en was laid out in 1688 on the order of Kyogoku Takatoyo, lord of Marugame, as a five-hectare stroll garde…
Okuboji
Okuboji is the eighty-eighth and last temple of the Shikoku pilgrimage, in the mountains of eastern Kagawa at the foot o…
Mikado Valley
Mikado is a gorge on the Myojin river, a tributary of the Doki, in the hills where Kagawa meets Tokushima. It was develo…
Sanuki Manno National Government Park
The only national government park in Shikoku, laid out across 350 hectares of hill country beside Mannoike reservoir. It…
Mannoike Pond
Kagawa has almost no rivers and very little rain, and its answer for more than a thousand years has been reservoirs. Man…
Kamebishiya
Kamebishiya has brewed soy sauce in Hiketa since 1753 and is the only maker in Japan still using the mushiro-koji method…
Hiketa Old Town
Hiketa is at the eastern end of Kagawa, against the Tokushima border, and it grew rich on soy sauce, sake and yellowtail…
Shoyu Mame
Shoyu mame is broad beans roasted dry and then dropped, still hot, into a marinade of soy sauce, sugar and chilli, and l…
Illustration — not a photographAnmochi Zoni
Kagawa's New Year soup contains a round rice cake filled with sweet red bean paste, in white miso broth, with daikon and…
Negoroji (Takamatsu)
Negoroji is the eighty-second station of the Shikoku pilgrimage, in cedar forest on the Goshikidai plateau above Takamat…
Ogijima
Ogijima is a village stacked on a slope. The houses climb the hillside above the port in tiers and the ways between them…
Onigashima Cave
Megijima is twenty minutes off Takamatsu, and near the top of it is a cave system running about four hundred metres into…
Teshima Art Museum
Teshima Art Museum contains one work and no walls to speak of. Ryue Nishizawa's building is a concrete shell shaped like…
Takaya Shrine
The main hall of Takaya Shrine stands on the summit of Mt. Inazumi at 404 metres, and its torii sits at the top of a sto…
Zenigata Sunae
On the beach at Ariake in Kanonji there is a coin. Not a real one — a Kanei Tsuho, the Edo currency, drawn in the white…
Ura-Hikimi Gorge
Hikimi is the mountainous inland part of Masuda, up against the Hiroshima border, and the gorge system there splits into…
Arifuku Onsen
Arifuku is a hot spring village folded into a narrow valley in Gotsu, with inns stacked up the slope on either side of a…
Ikoji Temple
Sesshu is the most important ink painter Japan produced, and he spent part of his later life in Masuda, at the western e…
Ryuzugataki Falls
Ryuzugataki is two waterfalls: the female fall at 30 metres and the male fall at 40, the larger of which is described as…
Gassantoda Castle
Gassantoda was the seat of the Amago, one of the great warlord houses of western Japan, and it is generally counted amon…
Iwami Kagura at Sannomiya Shrine
Iwami kagura is the loud one. Where much shrine dance in Japan is slow and hieratic, the western Shimane version is fast…
Yakumoan
Yakumoan occupies a converted samurai residence on Shiomi Nawate, the street of preserved warrior houses running along t…
Estimated from distance to the nearest airport or shinkansen station. Confirm actual journey times before you travel.