Photo: KimonBerlin / CC BY-SA 2.0Takamatsu is the port city of Kagawa, Japan's smallest prefecture, on the Seto Inland Sea, a water of some three thousand islands. It is known for Ritsurin, a garden of six ponds and a thousand hand-trained pines, for Naoshima, the art island an hour offshore, and for Sanuki udon. Every ship ties up at the Sunport quay in the city centre, a castle moated by seawater 10–12 minutes on foot and the garden seven by train.
Kagawa is the smallest prefecture in Japan and eats the most udon. That is not a quirk of taste — it is what happens when a region has too little rain for rice, plenty of wheat and salt, and a sea full of the small dried fish that make the broth.
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Naoshima refined copper and poisoned its own hillsides. Teshima was used as an illegal industrial waste dump for over a decade. Both islands were emptying. Then someone decided to put world-class contemporary art on them, and it worked — which is a much stranger story than the pumpkin on the jetty suggests.
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Kotohira-gu is the head shrine of Konpira, the deity sailors pray to. Seven hundred and eighty-five stone steps to the main hall, 1,368 to the inner shrine. For those who could not make the climb there was a substitute: you sent your dog.
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Ritsurin is seventy-five hectares, took over a century to build, borrows an entire mountain as its backdrop, and is not on the official list of Japan’s Three Great Gardens. Kagawa has never quite got over this, and the practical result is that you can walk it in peace.
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The water your ship is sitting in has about three thousand islands in it, tides that run through narrow straits like rivers, and a history of families who controlled those straits so effectively that the Portuguese called them pirates and the Japanese called them a navy.
Read the story →Cruise seasons run spring to autumn, but the port changes underneath them.
Ferries increase as the season starts. Ritsurin’s plums finish and the cherries begin.
Ritsurin and Tamamo Park both flower. The best-looking month of the year.
Dry, mild and long-lit. Island ferries are pleasant rather than hot.
The Inland Sea side is drier than the Pacific side. Arcades and udon are unaffected.
Island hopping is at its easiest. Start early and eat udon at midday.
The islands are busy. Ritsurin opens before six — use that.
Ferries can cancel. Late September is excellent.
Clear, mild, and the Setouchi Triennale runs in its autumn session in festival years.
Late November, with evening illumination. The garden at its finest.
Few ships. Udon is a winter food and the arcades are covered.
