Shikoku
Setting the scene for this photo gallery
What: This is a photo gallery from our nine day trip to Shikoku, the smallest of Japan’s four main islands. Scroll on to see what we saw!
P.S. You can click on a photo to make it bigger and scroll through them that way too.
Where: Loosely speaking, Shikoku is in the south west of Japan and consists of four provinces and we visited all four during our trip. For those of you that are knowledgeable about Wales and like comparisons, Shikoku is roughly the same size as Wales and has roughly the same population. Notable places we visited in Shikoku include:
Iya Valley and Oboke Gorge.
Naoshima - an island full of incredible art. Photography wasn’t permitted in most places so I can’t share the best of what there was to see! It’s one of my favourite destinations in Japan and I am planning a trip back in 2019.
Takamatsu - home to one of the most beautiful Japanese gardens and one of the best sunsets we have ever seen (which you can see at the end of the gallery!).
Kochi city (great castle, relaxed vibe,) as well as the Muroto Cape as well as various beaches and scenic spots across Kochi province.
Matsuyama - if I were to go back, I’d cut Matsuyama out. Small, standard Japanese city and you really wouldn’t be missing out if you didn’t make it here. We used it as bit of a rest day.
Why: I wanted to share what we saw in a mostly off the beaten track itinerary for many visitors to Japan or even domestic Japanese tourists!
I considered doing separate galleries for the different destinations in our trip. But I decided to do a single gallery because what made this holiday so spectacular, and memorable, was the sheer variety of what we saw and did and how it all came together. The sum was definitely greater than its parts in this instance. Sorry it’s a bit of a mammoth gallery but it shows the breadth of what we saw and shows the detail of the things we loved - you may need to give it a minute to load!When: We went to Shikoku at the end of April into May 2018 during Golden Week (a series of national holidays all fall within the same week hence the name Golden Week).
