Shikoku Travel Guide
Japan's Spiritual Island · 88 Sacred Temples
⛩️ Tokushima
Tokushima guards Shikoku's most dramatic geography. The Iya Valley — Japan's deepest V-shaped gorge — plunges through vine-bridge mountain villages unchanged for centuries, its river an impossible emerald. At Naruto Strait, tidal whirlpools up to 20m across rage beneath the bridge; a glass-bottom walkway puts you directly above them. Tokushima is also Temple 1 of the Ohenro pilgrimage, the 1,200km circuit of 88 sacred sites honouring Kobo Daishi.
🌊 Kochi
Kochi is Japan's wild southern frontier — the least-visited, most dramatic prefecture on Shikoku. Cape Ashizuri plunges into the Pacific in sheer white cliffs, and the Niyodo River is Japan's clearest, its cobalt water so transparent you can see every stone ten metres down. Hirome Market in Kochi city is the island's greatest food hall — locals eat katsuo tataki (flame-seared bonito over rice straw) at communal tables from morning to midnight.
🏯 Ehime
Ehime is crowned by Matsuyama Castle, one of Japan's twelve original surviving hilltop fortresses. Below it sits Dogo Onsen — Japan's oldest hot spring, whose three-storey Meiji-era bathhouse directly inspired the bathhouse in Spirited Away. The Shimanami Kaido — six bridges linking Ehime to Hiroshima across the Seto Inland Sea — is among the world's greatest cycling routes, 70km of island-hopping over turquoise water.
🍜 Kagawa
Kagawa is Japan's smallest prefecture and its udon capital. Sanuki udon — thick, chewy, served cold or hot from family-run shops open at dawn — is an obsession here; locals eat it for breakfast before work. Konpira-san demands 785 stone steps to the main shrine. And just offshore, Naoshima has transformed a farming island into one of the world's most celebrated contemporary art destinations — the Chichu Art Museum, Benesse House, and Yayoi Kusama's pumpkins drawing pilgrims of a different kind.
Updated 2026 · japan.gg/shikoku