Shikoku, Japan · City
Home to the Awa Odori dance festival and the starting point of Shikoku's 88-temple pilgrimage.
Train + bus — Direct bus from Osaka; train within Shikoku
Japan's largest dance festival, held every August in the streets of Tokushima with hundreds of thousands of dancers and musicians.
Tokushima is Japanese indigo: the Hachisuka clan built its wealth on awa-ai and in the nineteenth century the province produced almost all the country's dye. Working family workshops survive in the town centre where you can dye your own scarf or towel.
Shikoku's most famous dance festival, with performances held year-round.
The Hachisuka clan collection and a restored model of the palace. The best part is the adjoining Omote-Goten garden, designated a National Scenic Site: it is the original garden of the daimyo's palace, not a reconstruction. Closed on Mondays.
In the free zones of the festival the niwaka-ren form, improvised groups any visitor can join with no registration, no costume and no fee: all it takes is following the rhythm. It is the best way to live it from inside instead of watching it from a stand.
A small boat circles the 'gourd island' that forms the city centre in half an hour, passing under some 20 bridges. The night run, with Bizan lit up, is one of the best things in Tokushima and almost nobody knows about it.
Anime festival that occupies the entire city instead of a single venue: stages on Mount Bizan, the Awa Odori Kaikan, the station and the arcades. It grew out of the ufotable studio, which is based here. Attendance is free; it is usually held in May, though the calendar has seen cancellations.
One of the largest tidal whirlpools in the world, visible from a boat or an observation walkway.
In Naruto, about 20 kilometres away. It is the largest museum in Japan by floor area: 1,000 Western masterpieces reproduced at full size on ceramic panels, including the entire Sistine Chapel. It sounds like kitsch and works surprisingly well, but it needs half a day set aside.
Five temples of the circuit in a convenient urban stretch: Joraku-ji with its wave-shaped rock garden, Kokubun-ji on a Tenpyo-period site, Kannon-ji — the temple on the circuit with the most miracle legends — and Ido-ji, with an eleven-faced Kannon designated an Important Cultural Property.
Dark brown tonkotsu-shoyu broth, sweet-salty pork belly instead of chashu and, the house signature, a raw egg cracked into the bowl. It is ordered with a separate bowl of white rice, not with more noodles; there are three schools depending on the colour of the broth.
Several workshops in the city — some of them real textile manufacturers, not schools for tourists — take visitors by appointment to dye a scarf or a shirt; the hours are factory hours, with weekend closures in some cases.
About 10 kilometres to the northwest, the former house and warehouse of an indigo merchant family, with full-size models of the sukumo fermentation process. This is the place to understand indigo as a historic industry, beyond dyeing a handkerchief.
The densest bar district in Shikoku, south of the Shinmachi river: izakaya, wooden counters and places more than 40 years old. The classics take the customer who arrives alone in their stride, which is unusual in Japan.
A traditional puppet theatre unique to Tokushima with more than 300 years of history, performed at the Awa Jurobe Yashiki.
About 30 kilometres to the west. Awa washi goes back more than 1,300 years and they still make paper here for museum conservation worldwide; there is a workshop to make a sheet of your own.
It leaves from the fifth floor of the Awa Odori Kaikan. Key detail for planning: from April to October it runs up until nine at night, but from November to March it closes at half past five, so in winter there is no night view by ropeway.
The traditional starting point of the 88-temple Shikoku pilgrimage route.
Sudachi, the prefecture's emblematic citrus, accounts for 98% of Japanese production and is squeezed over fish, noodles and even beer. Awa-odori-dori is the local chicken breed, and sobagome zosui a thick soup of whole buckwheat grains that legend attributes to Heike refugees.
In Bunka no Mori park, eighteen minutes by bus: Western and Japanese painting, sculpture, photography and contemporary work for 200 yen, one of the cheapest admissions in Japan for a prefectural museum. The prefectural museum and the literature museum are in the same park.
In the downtown arcade, a cinema owned by the studio behind Demon Slayer and Fate, with themed screenings, exhibitions of production material and a café. It is probably the only cinema in the world run by an anime studio.
A cable car ride up to a lookout point with night views over the city and the bay.
The Yoshino, which they call the Saburo of Shikoku, reaches the sea in the north of the city; there are riverside walks and a cycle path along the levees. The rafting is in the Oboke gorge, two hours away by road.
A pottery village known for its large ceramic pieces, traditionally used to store local vinegar and sake.
Tokushima is one of the few prefectures in Japan without a single department store since Sogo closed in 2020. What remains are the Higashi-Shinmachi arcades, with a fair number of empty units, and Poppo-machi next to the station: an honest portrait of provincial Japan, more interesting as an anthropological walk than as a shopping destination.
A park containing the ruins of Tokushima Castle, a history museum, and the Japanese garden Senshukaku.
Course along the Yoshino river in late March, with a shorter alternative race; registration has to be done months in advance.
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