Today we were due to leave Takamatsu and the island of Shikoku. Before we left, we took advantage of some sunny weather to visit Ritsurin, one of Japan’s most famous gardens. It lived up to its reputation, with a beautiful setting at the foot of a mountain…..

…..and many ponds containing voracious carp. The latter were very well fed by the visitors, who could buy rice sticks to give them from one of the park’s cafés.

The carp were not the only wildlife in the garden; as we strolled around, there was an announcement over loudspeakers warning people not to approach a wild boar that had been seen entering the park from the mountain if they met it. At first, I misheard them and thought they said “bear”, which was worried everyone would run away from us…..

Ritsurin also had some unusual trees, like an evergreen Japanese oak which had sprouted from an acorn lodged 1.8m up in the branches of a now-dead pine tree, managed to put roots down to the ground and outlive its host. Its roots still start from the same height. There was also a pine that grown from a bonsai presented by the shogun to the local lord in 1863….

Finally the gardens had a pleasant tea room overlooking the pond, where ladies in kimonos performed the tea ceremony as they served us our matcha.

After a couple of hours in Ritsurin we headed off, with an ultimate destination of Kyoto. At the very end of the island of Shikoku we visited one last attraction there – the whirlpools of Naruto. These are a tidal phenomenon that form twice a day when two sea currents, headed in opposite directions, crash into each other, and we were lucky enough to be passing at exactly the right time to see them. First, we set out in a tourist cruise, right into the middle of the foaming sea. I am not sure if we saw any actual whirlpools, but the sight of the sea foaming around was very impressive and a lot of fun.

Next we climbed on to the magnificent bridge that links Shikoku to the neighbouring island of Awajishima.

There a viewing platform had been set up to view the “whirlpools” from above – including glass panels that let you look straight down onto the sea. It might have been the scary height, or the violent churning of the sea, but after a few minutes of looking at this, my head was spinning. Aki coped a bit better and managed to take some striking photos through the glass.

From the bridge we drove on, over the island of Awajishima and finally over another beautiful bridge onto Honshu, Japan’s biggest island. We were greeted by a first sight of Kobe, a city in Japan’s incredibly densely populated province of Kansai. From then on, the remaining two hours of our drive was through a dense urban sprawl along busy expressways.
It was a stark contrast with Shikoku, with its open spaces, clear roads and few tourists. We had enjoyed getting off the beaten track. Whilst Shikoku’s tourist sights may not quite match some of the most popular ones in the rest of Japan, the laid-back atmosphere, excellent value food and accommodation and friendly people made for a great week. Indeed, on several occasions local people had started to talk to us, despite the language barrier – something that had rarely happened in the rest of Japan.

Our arrival in Kyoto was inauspicious. We dropped off our hire car but then made the mistake of walking to our rental home, thinking that it would be a good way to get to know the city. Our route took us through some remarkable drab parts of central Kyoto. Surely such a famous destination had to be better than this? Tomorrow we would find out.

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