Shikoku, Japan · Countryside / satoyama
A remote mountain valley with vine bridges (kazurabashi) and isolated villages scattered across the hillsides.
Car — Very limited public transport, a car is strongly recommended
🛌 Pure relaxation🧘 Wellness & unplugging
A traditional suspension bridge woven from vines over the Iya River.
The hotel's own funicular drops 170 metres down the slope to open-air baths at the river's edge, with alkaline water surfacing at 39 degrees. Day use is possible, but it closes Wednesdays.
A house from around 1720, the second oldest in Iya, bought by Alex Kerr in 1973 and the subject of his book 'Lost Japan'. It has no interior ceilings because in the Edo period tobacco was hung from the beams to cure; you can visit it or sleep there, around the irori and without a television.
Shikoku's second-highest summit at 1,955 metres, and one of the island's sacred shugendo mountains: the treasure rock at the top is said to hold the sword of emperor Antoku. A chairlift goes up in 15 minutes and from there three paths take under an hour each. It can freeze from October to May, and heavy rain closes the access road.
Mountain trails with views over the steep valley and its isolated villages.
You mill the buckwheat, knead it and cut Iya soba, shorter and more brittle than the usual kind because here the grain is grown on unirrigated terraces. Then you eat it in a dining room with an irori hearth, with mountain vegetables, venison, potato and tofu; whatever is left over you take with you.
A resident came back from Osaka in 2002 and, seeing the birds eating the seed, made a doll with her father's face; today there are more than 300 of them against some 20 inhabitants, placed working the terraces, waiting for the bus or filling the classrooms of the closed school. It is an inhabited hamlet, not a set: visit quietly and do not photograph the inside of the houses.
The Yoshino at Koboke is one of the strongest whitewater stretches in Japan and, being dam-regulated, holds its flow even in midsummer. March to October; Koboke is markedly harder than Oboke, so check the age and level limits when booking.
Eight thatched houses in the terraced hamlet, restored under Alex Kerr's direction and rented for exclusive use, with irori and tatami and no neighbours in sight. They began as an answer to the valley's abandonment: renting out the empty houses instead of demolishing them.
The highest of Shikoku's 88 temples, at 1,000 metres, where Tokushima, Kagawa and Ehime meet; founded by Kobo Daishi in 789. What people remember are its 500 stone rakan, of which it is said that every visitor finds one with their own face. Note: the ropeway climbs from the Kagawa side, not from Iya.
A local association programme to work alongside farmers on vertiginous slopes, understand the cones of dried grass that serve both as fertiliser and as a reserve of wild seeds, and eat with the family. It is the most direct way to talk to people who live in the valley.
An easily accessible twin waterfall right beside the valley road.
A descent with harness and rope through moss-covered rock tunnels and pools, with a final abseil of about 40 metres down a waterfall. A very short season, July to September.
The valley's snack: goishi potatoes, firm tofu and konnyaku on skewers, brushed with miso and turned over the coals. They are sold at the stalls beside the vine bridge.
Theatre with moving scenery: dozens of painted sliding doors are flipped by hand in sequence to change the set of a rural shrine's stage. It survives in only two hamlets and is performed in October.
Known as the inner shrine of Konpira, it is a special temple of the circuit and a classic link between Kotohira and number 66. The ropeway covers 950 metres in about four minutes.
An 1867 house on a plot linked to the Heike who fled to Iya more than 800 years ago; its owners are the 20th generation of descendants of the man presented as personal physician to the child emperor Antoku. It keeps a fireproof storehouse and an irori that is lit every morning.
Hirara-yaki is cooked on a stone slab with a wall of miso that holds in the broth, and comes with amego or ayu skewered and salt-grilled. It is served mainly at the lodgings in Oku-Iya.
A traditional summer dance festival in the nearby Ikeda district, a smaller version of the famous Awa Odori of Tokushima.
A rain-prayer dance with more than 1,100 years of tradition, inscribed by UNESCO in 2022 as part of furyu-odori. It is performed at Zentoku's Tenman shrine on the 25th day of the sixth lunar month, which usually falls between July and August; depopulation makes it so hard to gather dancers that it is taught in the school.
Built in 1763, the largest house in the valley. It preserves the irazu-no-ma, the room set aside for ritual suicide, and in the garden a cedar 800 years old and 11 metres around. Closed Tuesdays and from December to March.
A national competition of pyrotechnicians with more than 20,000 shells, the largest in western Japan, on a Saturday in mid-November. All seats are paid and there is no free area.
A boat ride through a gorge of crystalline rock carved by the Yoshino River, at the entrance to the Iya Valley.
A pair of vine bridges known as 'husband and wife,' in a more remote part of the valley, next to a traditional hand-pulled cable car (yaen).
The greenish-white walls of Oboke are schist: sands laid down on the ocean floor some 100 million years ago, compressed 20 kilometres deep and then uplifted. The conglomeratic schist is designated a prefectural natural monument.
Secluded hot spring baths with views over the valley, with very few foreign visitors.
Ikeda was the trading hub of the Yoshino river and still has three working sake breweries that open their halls with a master brewer and sell directly, plus a local winery.
Three-car sightseeing train between Tadotsu and Oboke, with themed spring, summer and autumn chapters and a seasonal menu served as it climbs the gorge. It runs only on Fridays, weekends and public holidays, and booking is required.
The last Saturday of February, in the Ikeda sports hall and in two sessions, with new sake from all over Shikoku and a wooden masu included in the entry; at the same time the three local breweries open their halls to taste freshly pressed sake.
With no cities for tens of kilometres and the valley between 700 and 1,400 metres, light pollution is almost nil. The viewpoints at Ochiai and the open ground at Nagoro work well, but driving these roads at night calls for great care.
Here the funicular goes up instead of down, to a rotenburo of blue Awa stone high on the hillside looking out over the valley. Guests have dinner around irori hearths, with charcoal-grilled ayu and Iya soba.
Farmhouses terraced up the mountainside, with almost no tourism.
From the gorge road the river traces exactly the Japanese character ひ; nearby is Shishi-iwa, a rock shaped like a lion and carved by the current.
A system of cultivation on slopes of up to 40 degrees, without terraces, fertilised with grass cut from the mountain meadows; the FAO recognised it in 2018 as a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System. In autumn the koeguro, cones of dried grass, are visible everywhere.
Baskets and other objects are woven with the same vines used for the Kazurabashi bridge; each piece comes out unique because of the natural curve of the stem. You must book by phone the day before.
After dark the Kazurabashi bridge and the Biwa waterfall are illuminated and can be seen from outside without paying the bridge toll. The hours change with the season, so confirm them.
A double and very homemade museum at the Oboke service area: upstairs, the valley's monsters recreated with a quiz and picture-card theatre; downstairs, minerals, fossils and meteorites that explain the geology of the gorge. In 2008 the district was recognised as 'monstrous heritage to be handed down to posterity'.
The easiest onsen to reach by public transport from Awa-Ikeda, and the fallback when the one in the canyon is closed because it is Wednesday.
Alkaline onsen with views of the gorge and the Dosan line railway bridge, cheap and easy to reach if you arrive at Oboke by train.
Venison and wild boar burgers from the area on a terrace above the Yoshino river: the modern version of a mountain cooking that has always used game.
Objects and documents of the Heike and of peasant life in the deep valley, with a screening room. Short opening hours, closed Wednesdays.
Ikeda is the only settlement in the municipality with real nightlife: a handful of izakayas and neighbourhood bars around the station, almost all closing early and without an English menu.
The complex next to the vine bridge car park, with a local produce market and places to eat: the most practical spot to buy Iya soba, konjac, tea and vine basketry in a single stop.
On the first weekend of November, a parade of armour and a matchlock demonstration in the birthplace of Miyoshi Nagayoshi, the warlord some claim as the unifier who came before Nobunaga.
A statue perched on a rocky outcrop above a roughly 200-meter drop, one of the most photographed viewpoints in the valley.
A small 'scarecrow school' where you learn the wooden frame, the stuffing and the sewing of the face. It depends on the maker's availability, so confirm with the tourist office.
Flat water on the dam lake, with paddle boarding, canoeing and an instructor: the alternative when children are below the minimum age for the rapids.
One of Japan's most famous end-of-the-world stations: no access road, at the bottom of a ravine, with a compulsory switchback and the only entirely wooden station building JR Shikoku has left. You reach it on foot along a path of about 25 minutes.
Udatsu are raised firewalls between houses, a mark of the wealth of the 19th-century tobacco merchants. Ikeda keeps a stretch of facades with udatsu next to the tobacco house-museum.
The valley is dotted with wooden figures of local monsters and a stele dedicated to the Konaki-jiji, the old man who cries like a baby, born here and popularised by Mizuki Shigeru. The legends began as warnings to keep children away from ravines and rivers.
An open ridge between the two highest peaks of the massif, with a sea of clouds at dawn. It demands self-sufficiency: there are no shops, mobile coverage is patchy and the tracks close in rain.
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