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Kagawa eats more udon per head than anywhere in Japan. At a seimenjo you take a bowl, hand it over for noodles, add your own broth and toppings from the counter, and pay by the plate. From about ¥300, and better than anything you will pay ten times for.
A prefecture that eats more noodles than anywhere in Japan, because it could not grow rice
Kagawa eats more udon per head than anywhere in Japan and renamed itself Udon Prefecture to say so. The self-service mills are the local form: you queue, say the size, add your own broth and toppings, and pay by what is on the tray. Some open at six in the morning for people on their way to work.
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.
Plus salt flats and dried sardine
Cheap, filling, and made from what is here
The self-service seimenjo format
From about ¥300, in sheds with no sign
Have kamatama at a self-service mill, then a small kake somewhere else. Twice in one day is normal here.
The one the queue agrees on, the one people who live here use instead, and the one nearest your ship. Opening days change; check before you build a day around one.
In an old estate house near Yashima, and the one most visitors are taken to.
Open in Google MapsWhere locals goNakanoudon Gakko中野うどん学校Where you make it yourself, which is the fastest way to understand the self-service rules.
Open in Google MapsClosest to the berthMentsu-dan Takamatsu丸亀製麺 高松店The self-service mill format at its plainest: queue, say the size, add your own broth.
Open in Google MapsEach of these still lands you back aboard with the hour to spare on a 6-hour stop ashore.
Each one is a finished day we have walked and timed, with this stop in it. Read the route rather than assembling it yourself.
Each of these still lands you back aboard with the hour to spare.
2 hr 30 min for bothA fine-grained sugar made from local sugarcane by a hand-kneading process that takes days, pressed into small moulded sweets shaped as flowers and leaves.
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2 hr 45 min for bothOne of only three Japanese castles moated with seawater, taken directly from the sea.
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3 hr 30 min for bothA whole chicken leg roasted hard with garlic and black pepper, eaten with your hands and mopped with cabbage.
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