Shikoku: Off the Beaten Path

Walking the lesser known mountain roads of rural Shikoku.

Dear Jane,

I think one of the most exciting parts of my trip was that I went to Shikoku, which is really off the beaten path.

Japan’s “mainland” is comprised of four large islands: Honshu (home to the cities on the Golden Route), Hokkaido (winter sports and Sapporo beer), Kyushu (Nagasaki and Beppu), and Shikoku. After that, there are millions of smaller islands, including the 150-island Okinawa prefecture.

If it’s one of the biggest islands, is it really off the beaten path?

In Tokyo, I visited the Metropolitan Government Building, a.k.a. city hall. You might be aware that each tower in this building has an observation deck and that on clear days, you can see Mt. Fuji. But did you know that there’s a Japan-wide brochure office on the first basement level?

There’s a small section on Shikoku, but they only have brochures in Japanese. An attendant came over to ask me what I was looking for and did not hide her shock when I said I was indeed looking for a brochure on Shikoku. Tokushima prefecture, to be exact. She had to go find an English version in the back.

Shikoku is the smallest of the four main islands and the least visited. It has some sites worth visiting and is most famous for the Shikoku Henro, a Buddhist pilgrimage that encompasses 88 temples and encircles the entire island. The next most known landmarks in Tokushima Prefecture/Iya Valley, at least, are the Vine Bridges. There are a couple of them.

Shikoku is very mountainous and has a lot of steep river valleys. The clans that lived here would build these bridges to retreat across during and then cut off their enemies by literally hacking away the bridge. Some of the bridges withstood time, and people travel to walk across them.

There’s also a statue of a little boy peeing off a cliff to commemorate the simpler past times of the boys who lived in the area before Japan mastered its manga, anime, and video game industries. The view from the cliff is supposed to be beautiful.

Caleb lives near Unpenji, the 66th temple on the Henro, and I had wanted to see that. In preparing for my trip and trying to research Shikoku, the only significant thing I found was Robert C. Sibley’s book, The Way of the 88 Temples: Journeys on the Shikoku Pilgrimage.

It’s not a guidebook by any means. Shikoku does not make an appearance in any guidebooks. None. Youtube has about three videos, and they’re all about the vine bridges, the videographers deciding if they want to pay a fee to cross the bridges, and the peeing boy statue.

Why isn’t there any information about Shikoku?

Shikoku has such difficult terrain, and I think that plays the biggest factor. One of the local historical sites I saw was the original Okawa Bridge. It was built in the early 1920s by a local sake brewery owner. The government wasn’t willing to fund the construction of the bridge.

It was the first bridge in the area. Up until that point, the residents ferried across the river if they needed to get across. The bridge was so important to them at the time because the first rail service came to the prefecture, and they felt that they would fall behind while the rest of the country modernized.

The residents in the area paid for the upkeep of the bridge until the 1950s or 60s, when vehicular traffic became more common. The government built a new bridge that could accommodate cars, and the original was abandoned.

Having a car in Shikoku is really advantageous, as there is a lack of infrastructure that supports tourism otherwise. I did see some other tourists while I was there. We stopped at a supermarket so that Caleb could get his groceries and I could explore a bit of authentic Japan. There were two different German (speaking) couples, and we gawked at them as much as the locals did because we weren’t expecting to see them. Shikoku is apparently a popular campervan adventure area for Europeans.

With the addition of modern roads came a bus system, but I learned that they don’t run on time. And it takes so long to travel on them. Caleb lives really close in distance to the bridges and the peeing boy, but the bus route takes almost 2 hours to get to either location because the roads go around mountains.

After the grocery store and a stop at the bank next door, we drove to a conveyor belt sushi restaurant. It took some time to get there, but we went through some tunnels, the next big modernization in this rural area, and that apparently sped things up.

So, the tunnels between Kagawa and Miyoshi are relatively new. I say tunnels, you are literally going through mountains, and therefore, the route takes you through a number of them of varying sizes. According to my Assistant Language Teacher friends, the tunnels have completely changed life for local people. Before the tunnels, you used to take a scenic, winding, and arguably dangerous road that took 3/4 of the time longer to navigate. Now you can get to Sushiro in under 35 minutes!

Japanese Caleb

What did I do in Shikoku?

My options were pretty limited because I only had one real day in Shikoku, and I did not trust the bus system. So, I thought I would walk a little loop. Caleb’s apartment is literally on a cliff above the Yoshino River, and my plan was to walk down to the next bridge, cross, walk back to the opposite direction, and cross over the next bridge on that side.

It didn’t quite go as anticipated. One of the bridges Google Maps told me to cross was actually the Okawa bridge ruins. So, I kept going. This ended up being an almost 3-hour walk.

Sidewalks made limited appearances, and there were a lot of curves on a very busy road, some of which had very tall and aggressive vegetation that blocked my view of oncoming traffic and scratched me up.

Once I crossed to the other side of the river, I was on a smaller, one lane mountain road. It was steep and slippery because the trees prevented the sun from drying out the road. The curves here were even more blind than the main road. You’re probably thinking that this was dangerous. It was, and I was scared, but I also really wanted to see a wild boar. Caleb tells me an average of 8 people die by boar attack annually.

But that’s only during mating and birthing seasons. My death-by-boar risk was low. I saw some snakes and lizards, a lot of butterflies, and a very aggressive Shiba that was thankfully tied to its home; no boars in their natural habitat.

I ate one in hot dog form for lunch, though.

Along the rest of my walk, I visited a fake post office, which was featured in a popular early 2000s Japanese film. I’d tell you more about it, but American Google is providing me with less than informative search results, and Maps doesn’t recognize that post office, only the real one that is diagonally across the street.

After my walk, I took a bus, which arrived late, to Ikeda, the “city” nearby. Ikeda is home to one of the most important train stations/transportation hubs in the area. It’s actually quite small, but it’s also home to the Apanman train.

Anpanman is a cartoon superhero who has a head made of bread. If you don’t watch a lot of Japanese children’s TV, but do listen to K-pop, you’ve probably heard BTS’s song, Anpanman. It’s inspired by Anpanman. Anyway. Japan has a lot of theme train options, including Pokémon and Hello Kitty.

Ikeda has one main shopping street and is otherwise very residential. I had the boar-dog at Heso Salon & Camp, which is a cute little cafe that sells local handmade goods and is also a hostel. Caleb calls this place the barbecue restaurant because of the boar-dog and their more expansive game featuring dinner menu.

There are a couple of schools in Ikeda that seem to have a lot of commuting students. The waiting room at the train station was filled with middle and high school students, and I felt a little othered while sitting there. I decided to take a walk and found myself on the other side of the city at the hydroelectric dam.

The Yoshino River is well known for its beautiful color. It looked beautiful even without sunlight at the dam. It started to rain lightly, and I slowly walked back to the train. The rain was refreshing.

I’m so glad Caleb gets to live in such a cool place! He requested to teach in a rural area so that he could really use the Japanese language, and he’s really coming into his Japanese self here. I hope to be able to visit again to see more of the sites and more Shikoku.

<3 Katherine

PS – Just after the beginning of the pandemic, Shikoku’s scarecrow village became popular. Learn more about that here.