After Okayama, we
left the island of Honshu in favor of Shikoku. Shikoku is the least
traveled by tourists, and it shows. There is practically no English
on the island, and very little effort has been made to make it
tourist-friendly. Still, it was a fun experience. The island
is more agricultural than Honshu, and it's quite lovely.
Our first stop was
Takamatsu ("tahk-ah-mahts"). The chief reason for staying
in Takamatsu was the easy access to Kotohira, which was the main
attraction we were going for on Shikoku. But, in looking through our
book, we found Ritsuren Park, a beautiful landscape garden.
The Southern
Garden was all we had time to see, since we were pressing on to Kotohira.
Work on the park began in the 1600s and took about 100 years to
complete. With that much time into it, it's gotta be spectacular,
which it is.
Mt. Shuin forms a
perfect backdrop for the garden, giving it a very large apparent
size. It strikes a nice contrast to those gardens we saw which were
surrounded by city. This one just seems to be surrounded by
nature...it's deceptive.
Finding the park
was an interesting experience. Here's Elaine's recollection:
"Attempting
to follow Frommer's directions to Ritsurin Park and the gardens there, we
wandered for a bit. Then we spotted a map at the station that showed
how to get there. There was no English, but thinking we had figured
it out, we tried to follow its directions. We ended up walking for
an hour getting very frustrated. Looking at the map at the station
again, we saw that we had gone in the exact opposite direction we should
have. We debated about taking a taxi, but decided to continue
walking. This time we found it."
So, the key learning here...don't go the wrong direction. You'll
get there faster going the right direction. It took us 15 minutes on
the return trip, walking the right way. Very helpful.
After all that exercise, we figured to have a nice, relaxing stop at
Kotohira. Yeah, right.
Dragging our tired bodies...to Kotohira...
Takamatsu Links:
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