Takamatsu

Shikoku, Japan · City

Shikoku's front door: Ritsurin Garden, which many Japanese rate as the finest in the country and which Michelin gave three stars; a lava plateau where a war was decided in 1185; a quayside with boats out to the art islands of the Inland Sea; and some eight hundred udon shops in Japan's smallest prefecture.

The essentials

Getting there

Train — This is the natural way into Shikoku from Honshu. From Okayama the Marine Liner rapid crosses the Great Seto Bridge in 54 minutes for ¥1,660 in unreserved seating, running roughly every half hour; it is a double-decker commuter train, not a reservation-only express (the upper deck and the green car are reserved and cost extra). From Osaka or Kyoto it is shinkansen to Okayama then a change, about 3h30 from Kyoto. Limited expresses run within Shikoku: the Ishizuchi to Matsuyama (2h30), the Uzushio to Tokushima (1h05) and the Shimanto/Nanpu via Utazu towards Kochi (2h10). JR Takamatsu is a dead-end terminus beside the harbour; 300 metres away is Takamatsu-Chikko, terminus of the private Kotoden network, which is what you actually use in town: the Kotohira Line stops at Ritsurin-koen (6 minutes, ¥200) and the Shido Line reaches Kotoden Yashima (about 17 minutes, ¥360) and Yakuri (¥390). The centre is flat and walkable, and the island ferries leave from the port right beside the station. A car is unnecessary except for Shionoe or for driving the udon circuit out in the Kagawa countryside. Takamatsu Airport is about 40 minutes by bus (¥1,000), with flights to Tokyo, Okinawa and a handful of international routes.

Frequently asked questions about Takamatsu

What to do in Takamatsu: 28 activities

• Getting Sanuki udon right 1 h must-see

  Kagawa is Japan's smallest prefecture and by a wide margin the one with the highest density of udon shops: 5.08 soba and udon establishments per 10,000 residents in the 2021 economic census, against 4.33 for the runner-up. Here udon is breakfast and lunch food, not dinner. Three basic forms: kake, in hot dried-sardine broth; bukkake, with a little concentrated sauce poured over; and kamatama, noodles straight from the pot without rinsing, tossed in the bowl with raw egg and sauce, invented at Yamagoe Udon in Ayagawa. Two classics in central Takamatsu: Ueharaya Honten, by Ritsurin's north gate, pure self-service 9:30-14:30 and closed Sundays, where you take your own bowl, pour your own broth and pick tempura off the tray; and Chikusei in Kameoka-cho, 11:00-14:30 and closed Mondays, where the chikuwa and soft-boiled egg are battered and fried in front of you to order. The thing to know: almost every good shop closes when the day's dough runs out, often before 14:00 and sometimes by 12:30. Eating udon at three in the afternoon in Kagawa usually means eating bad udon.

• Ritsurin Garden 2.5 h must-see

  Six ponds, thirteen man-made hills and around a thousand pines pruned by hand one at a time, with Mount Shiun behind as borrowed scenery. The lords of Sanuki began it and the Matsudaira finished it around 1745 after more than a century of work; it is designated a Special Place of Scenic Beauty and is the largest garden in that category in Japan, and the Michelin Green Guide gave it three stars. Admission ¥500 (¥170 for schoolchildren) and it opens every day of the year from sunrise to sunset: roughly 7:00-17:00 in January, until 19:00 in summer. It is 6 minutes by train from Kotoden Chikko (Ritsurin-koen stop) or a 3-minute walk from JR Ritsurin-koen-Kitaguchi.

• The Yashima plateau and its lookout 3 h must-see

  A flat-topped lava mesa 292 metres above the sea, an island until the channel was filled in during the 17th century and now a peninsula attached to the city. From the Shishi-no-Reigan lookout on the northern rim you see the whole Inland Sea with its islands stacked up and, in clear weather, the Great Seto Bridge; this is where people throw kawarake, small clay discs flung into the void for luck. Get up on the Kotoden shuttle bus from JR Yashima and Kotoden Yashima, by car on the Yashima Driveway, which has been toll-free since 2018 (parking at the top is ¥300 a day), or on foot up the old path, a solid hour of continuous climb. Two warnings: the ropeway that used to run here closed in 2005 and no longer exists, and the Yashima aquarium has been shut for rebuilding since April 2025.

• Shikoku Mura, the museum of relocated houses 2.5 h

  At the foot of Yashima, a five-hectare hillside up which some thirty real buildings from all four Shikoku prefectures have been carried and rebuilt beam by beam: farmhouses, a sugar-cane press hut with its circular stone mill, lighthouse keepers' houses from the islands, a rural kabuki stage and a vine bridge like those in the Iya Valley (this one with a steel cable inside). There is also a Tadao Ando art gallery, included in the ticket, with a stepped sheet of water. Admission ¥1,600 adults, ¥1,000 university students, ¥600 junior and senior high, free for primary; open 9:30-17:00 with last entry 16:30, closed Tuesdays. Be warned: it is all slope and uneven stone steps, so wear proper shoes, and it takes a good two hours.

• Honetsuki-dori and Inland Sea fish for dinner 2 h

  Since udon is not a dinner food, evening eating in Kagawa is something else: honetsuki-dori, a whole bone-in chicken leg roasted with a lot of garlic and pepper, eaten with your hands and ordered in two versions, oyadori (old hen, chewy and intensely savoury) or hinadori (young bird, tender). It was invented in Marugame in the 1950s and is now all over Takamatsu, in the side streets off the arcades. The other half of the menu is the Inland Sea: Kagawa yellowtail, sea bream, conger and sawara, which here is eaten raw in spring, unusually for Japan. The bar districts are Kawaramachi and Furubaba-cho; people eat early and many kitchens close before 22:00.

• Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum 2 h booking

  The sculptor Isamu Noguchi set up his studio in Mure, east of Takamatsu, to work Aji granite with the local stonecutters, and on his death in 1988 it was left exactly as it stood: the circular stone storehouse with more than a hundred pieces, many unfinished, the samurai house he had moved here, and the sculpted hill behind. This is not a museum you simply walk into: it opens Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays only, in guided one-hour sessions at 10:00, 13:00 and 15:00 (10:00 and 11:30 in July and August), you must book and pay online at least 24 hours ahead, and admission is ¥3,300, free up to high-school age. It is a 20-minute walk from Kotoden Yakuri station.

• Japan's longest shopping arcade 2 h

  The covered arcades of the centre add up to some 2.7 kilometres, the longest in the country: eight linked streets, the main one being Marugamemachi with its glass-domed circular plaza. It is a much-cited case of urban regeneration — the shopkeepers pooled the land and rebuilt it between 1990 and 2012 rather than let it hollow out — and it explains why central Takamatsu is still alive when equivalent Japanese cities are boarded up. Here are the department stores, the Kagawa craft shops and several udon houses; most of it shuts around 19:00-20:00, but the bars on the side streets carry on.

• Kamaage udon at the foot of Yashima 1 h

  The two best-known udon houses in the area sit right beside Shikoku Mura, so the combination makes itself. Waraya, open since 1975 in a thatched farmhouse with a water wheel, serves kamaage — hot undrained noodles dipped in a bowl of sauce with ginger and spring onion — and the tarai version, in a wooden tub to share between three or four. Opposite, Udon Honjin Yamadaya occupies a two-hundred-year-old merchant house with a garden, has an English menu and long hours, and is one of very few places still serving in mid-afternoon. Neither is cheap by Kagawa standards — ¥700-900 a bowl rather than the ¥300 of a neighbourhood self-service — but they are the ones you can sit in without rushing.

• Megijima and the ogres' cave 4 h

  Twenty minutes by ferry from Takamatsu Port (¥370 each way, six sailings a day from 8:00 to 18:10) to an island of little over a hundred people that presents itself as the Onigashima of the Momotaro folk tale. The pretext is a 400-metre man-made cave dug into Mount Washigamine, found in 1914 and fitted out in the 1950s with plaster ogres: ¥600 (¥300 for schoolchildren), open 8:30-17:00. Above it there is a 188-metre lookout with the Inland Sea in every direction. What genuinely surprises is the harbour village: it is ringed by oote, dry-stone walls two and three metres high built by hand to break the winter wind and the waves. A minibus runs up to the cave and there are rental bikes at the port building.

• Ogijima, the island on a slope 5 h

  Forty minutes by ferry from Takamatsu (¥510) to a village of fewer than two hundred people built on a slope so steep that there are no streets, only stairways and metre-wide alleys between wooden houses. Stepping off the boat you are met by Ogijima's Soul, Jaume Plensa's white canopy woven from the letters of eight alphabets, the most photographed permanent work in the archipelago. At the very top, half an hour's walk up, stands the 1895 lighthouse built of unpainted Aji granite, a rarity in Japan. A handful of permanent artworks are scattered through the village, along with cats everywhere; there are three or four places to eat and they close early, so plan your return boat before you sit down. Megijima can be combined on the same day, since the ferry calls at both.

• Ritsurin lit up in autumn 1.5 h only 20-29 Nov

  For ten nights at the end of November the garden reopens after closing time and is illuminated: the 26th edition runs 20-29 November 2026. Ritsurin's maples colour late, towards the end of November and well after Kyoto, which makes this a second chance for anyone arriving in Japan at that point. Evening admission is charged separately from the daytime ticket, and the exact hours and price are announced in late October; there is also a shorter spring illumination during cherry blossom.

• Sanuki Takamatsu Matsuri and its fireworks 3 h only 12-14 Aug

  The city's big festival is always on 12, 13 and 14 August, with mass dancing through the arcades and the centre. The big night is the 13th: some 6,000 fireworks between 20:15 and 20:45 over the Sunport waterfront, launched from the water's edge so they reflect off the bay. You can watch free from the harbour promenade and around it, four minutes' walk from the station, and there are about 2,700 paid seats from ¥5,000 to ¥12,000. It coincides with Obon, so hotels sell out and the trains are packed.

• Setouchi Triennale and the art of the Inland Sea 8 h

  The Setouchi Triennale runs every three years across a dozen Inland Sea islands and Takamatsu Port itself, which serves as the base port: the 2025 edition was the sixth and the next is in 2028, again split into three seasons (spring, summer and autumn). In the off years — 2026 and 2027 — nothing is shut: many of the works on Megijima and Ogijima are permanent and can be seen year-round, though a lot of house installations open only at weekends and for short hours. During the Triennale itself the ferries genuinely fill up: queues of an hour and a half to board, so start early and buy the artwork pass.

• Takamatsu Castle and Tamamo Park 1.5 h

  One of Japan's three great 'water castles', with Imabari and Nakatsu: the moat is filled not with fresh water but with seawater, which comes and goes with the tide through a sluice, and sea bream swim in it. The keep was dismantled in 1884 and has not been rebuilt, but the restored stone base remains, along with two original turrets designated Important Cultural Properties — the Ushitora and the Tsukimi, which watched for arriving ships — and the 1917 Hiunkaku pavilion. Admission ¥300, free under 18, and it is literally next to JR Takamatsu and Kotoden Chikko; hours change month by month because it opens sunrise to sunset, from 5:30 in summer to a 17:00 close in winter.

• Tea at the Kikugetsutei pavilion 0.75 h

  The teahouse the lords of Sanuki used to receive guests, built out over the edge of Nanko pond: you go in barefoot, matcha comes with a sweet, and you drink it kneeling on tatami with the garden framed by the door posts like a painting. The name means 'pavilion for scooping up the moon' and it was designed to catch its reflection on the water. It is paid separately from garden admission, at the pavilion itself: ¥800 with matcha (¥500 for children) or ¥600 with sencha, open 9:00-16:30 with last entry at 16:00. A second, thatched teahouse, the Higurashi-tei, opens at weekends and on public holidays only.

• The battlefield of Yashima (1185) 2 h

  In March 1185 the Taira dug in here with the child emperor and Minamoto no Yoshitsune surprised them from the landward side after crossing the strait in a storm; a month later they were destroyed at Dan-no-ura. The episode every Japanese knows is that of Nasu no Yoichi, the archer who shot down a fan set on a ship's mast, and the flat ground below the plateau is dotted with marked sites: Chi-no-ike pond where the swords were washed, Funakakushi where the boats were hidden, the grave of old Sasanami. You walk or cycle it around the Yashima Higashi district, it is free, and the signs are almost all in Japanese only: the wider story is easier to follow in the treasure hall at Yashima-ji.

• Yashima-ji, temple 84 of the 88 1 h

  Temple 84 on the Shikoku pilgrimage, up on the plateau among the pines, founded by tradition in 754 by the Chinese monk Ganjin and moved to this spot by Kukai. The grounds are free; the treasure hall, which holds armour and objects from the Genpei war, costs ¥500. To one side is the shrine of Tasaburo, the tanuki that local legend makes chief of all the tanuki of Shikoku and who appears in Ghibli's Pom Poko. You will see real henro here, pilgrims in conical hats with staffs, many doing the route in sections over several years: the pattern is to chant the Heart Sutra before the main hall and the Daishi hall, then collect a stamp at the nokyosho, which shuts at 17:00 sharp.

• Boat ride on the saltwater moat 0.5 h only 1 Mar - 30 Nov

  The jofune experience: a wooden boat with a boatman circles the castle's inner moat in about thirty minutes, skirting the stone wall from below, which is the only angle from which its scale makes sense. Because the water is seawater, the moat's sea bream come up to the boat and you feed them on board, which works very well with children; the ticket includes the fish food and the loan of a period hat. It costs ¥500 for adults and ¥300 for children aged 5 and up, on top of park admission, and it only runs from 1 March to 30 November, every half hour from 10:00 to 15:30 except between noon and 13:00.

• Kagawa Prefectural Government East Building, by Kenzo Tange 1 h

  A 1958 government office block that appears in every history of Japanese modern architecture: Kenzo Tange translated traditional timber joinery into exposed concrete, letting the floor-slab edges project like beams, and left the ground floor open to the public as a covered plaza with Genichiro Inokuma's mural 'Wakei Seijaku' and a garden to the south. It was commissioned by governor Masanori Kaneko, who used architecture as cultural policy in postwar Kagawa; in February 2022, after years of seismic strengthening, it was designated an Important Cultural Property, at the time the youngest postwar building to receive that status. The pilotis, the ground-floor lobby and the garden can be visited free Monday to Friday, 8:30-17:15, a 10-minute walk from the station.

• Kitahama Alley, the harbour warehouses 2 h

  A row of 1920s corrugated-iron and timber port warehouses that were due for demolition and were instead rehabilitated as a block from the late 1990s, leaving the rust and the beams on show: today there are cafés with terraces over the water, galleries, vintage shops and a couple of bars looking out at the harbour. It is the best place in Takamatsu for sunset, because it faces northwest across the bay. It is about 10 minutes on foot from Kotoden Katahara-machi or 15 from JR Takamatsu; hours vary by business, but shops close around 19:00 and the bars keep going late.

• Shionoe Onsen, the hot spring inland 4 h

  The municipality's only hot spring is about 45 minutes south by bus, in a mountain valley on the Kotonami river close to the Tokushima border: a handful of inns in a narrow gorge, fed by a source that tradition attributes to the monk Gyoki in the 8th century. The municipal bathhouse Gyoki-no-yu has closed, and day bathing is now offered by two hotels: Shin-Kabakawa Kanko Hotel (¥600, 10:30-21:00, open daily) and Livmax Resort Sanuki Shionoe (¥700, 6:00-11:00 and 15:00-22:00). It is an entirely unpretentious place with a local clientele, and its moments are autumn, when the gorge colours, and early June, when fireflies come out along the river. Kotoden's Shionoe Line buses leave from Takamatsu Station, cost ¥1,000 and run almost twenty times a day, the last one back at about 20:45; several departures do not run at weekends.

• Sunport, the glass lighthouse and the tower 1.5 h

  The reclaimed esplanade between the station and the harbour is the city's evening walk. At the tip of the breakwater stands Seto Shirube, a lighthouse some fourteen metres tall built of glass blocks that glows entirely red after dark: it is billed as the world's first glass lighthouse, and you reach it on foot along the mole. Beside it, the Symbol Tower — the tallest building in Shikoku — has a free observation floor on level 29 looking over the Inland Sea and Yashima. All of it is free and four minutes' walk from the station: the natural filler for the dead hours between the last ferry and dinner.

• The bonsai nurseries of Kinashi and Kokubunji 2.5 h

  Around 80% of the pine bonsai sold in Japan comes from two districts in western Takamatsu, Kinashi and Kokubunji, where they have been grown for more than two centuries on a particular clay soil. This is not a display garden: they are working fields with thousands of black and five-needle pines lined up in trays in the open air, run by family nurseries you can visit. The easy starting point is Takamatsu Bonsai-no-Sato, a centre with sales, displays and workshops, and from there you walk or cycle between the nurseries. Kinashi is about 15 minutes from Takamatsu on the JR Yosan Line; call ahead if you want to enter a specific nursery, because these are businesses, not museums.

• The countryside udon circuit by taxi or bus 4 h booking

  The legendary udon houses are not in Takamatsu: they are in sheds beside rice paddies in Ayagawa, Sakaide or Manno, unsigned, unreachable by public transport and open for two or three hours a day. Two solutions exist for visitors: the 'udon taxi', prefecture-accredited drivers with an udon bowl sign on the roof who run circuits of two or three shops (metered, or in fixed packages of around 3 hours), and the udon route bus that runs at weekends and in high season. Both need booking ahead, and they earn their keep above all if you want to reach Yamagoe Udon in Ayagawa, where kamatama was invented and you eat on benches under a shelter in the garden, or Nakamura Udon. They all leave in the morning, because by half past one the circuit is over.

• Wooden boat on Nanko pond 0.5 h

  Half an hour in a traditional wooden boat around the main pond, with a boatman pointing out what appears from each angle: this is how you understand that the garden was designed to be seen from the water rather than from the paths. It costs ¥850 for adults and ¥420 for children, seats six, and tickets are taken at the landing. Late-morning slots sell out at weekends and in high season, so sign up as soon as you enter.

• Yakuri-ji and its funicular, temple 85 2 h

  Temple 85 on the pilgrimage, wedged beneath the five rock spires of Mount Gokenzan at 366 metres. Pilgrims climb a very steep stone path; everyone else can take the Yakuri cable car, running since 1964, which covers 684 metres of track and 167 metres of height in about four minutes, leaving every quarter of an hour from 7:30: ¥1,000 return for adults and ¥500 for schoolchildren (¥600 one way up). Nobody prays here for health or exam results: the Kanjizaiten enshrined in the grounds is a deity of business prosperity, and the votive plaques come from companies. From the lookout behind the temple you get the Yashima plateau in full profile, which is the best angle on it there is. Kotoden Yakuri station is ¥390 from Chikko, then about 15 minutes on foot to the cable car.

• Yashimaru, the wooden ring on the summit 1 h

  Opened in 2022 on top of Yashima: a curving corridor some two hundred metres long with an undulating timber roof that twists along the rim of the plateau, by architect Takashi Suo. Entry is free, and there is an exhibition room, a café and a viewing balcony; the point is to walk it, because the landscape appears in fragments between the beams. It normally opens 9:00-17:00, stays open until 21:00 on Fridays and Saturdays, and closes Tuesdays — worth checking the calendar, which shifts with the season.

• Swimming at Megijima beach 3 h

  Five minutes' walk from Megijima harbour there is a beach some 600 metres long with a pine grove behind it: the easiest swimming beach reachable from Takamatsu without a car, twenty minutes by boat. The Inland Sea here is calm and shallow with no surf. The bathing season runs from early July to late August, with four or five beach huts open and ¥100 showers, but there are no changing rooms and the lifeguard post is staffed only at weekends, on public holidays and during Obon, 9:30-16:00. Outside those weeks the island empties out almost completely; bring food, because very little is open in the village.

What only happens on specific dates

• Boat ride on the saltwater moat 1 Mar - 30 Nov
• Sanuki Takamatsu Matsuri and its fireworks 12-14 Aug
• Ritsurin lit up in autumn 20-29 Nov

Chains well with

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