Intrigued by a relocated historical village we visited Shikoku Mura. A collection of historical buildings that had been relocated from across the island of Shikoku to preserve the historical usage and lifestyles. The village exceeded our expectations and successfully educated you on how village life existed. The variety of the buildings provided an insight into various traditional country crafts ie: soy sauce production, sugar cane pressing, bark steaming for the production of paper, rice flour production by watermill.

If you read about famous Japanese gardens Ritsurin garden does not get a mention in the top ten yet for us it epitomised everything we love about Japan and it was one of the highlights of our trip. It is split into two halves old and new, the original garden was developed four hundred years ago the new one a hundred years ago. The original four hundred year old garden is in a very traditional style especially the marriage of trees, water and view points whilst the newer garden has less obvious water areas and the viewpoints are less dramatic. It should be noted that within the garden there are approximately 1400 pine trees that had been planted to create dramatic views through their density and traditional shaping.