Japan
Takamatsu
The udon capital, where you carry your own bowl and queue before the doors open.
The queue starts before the shop opens and the sign is only in Japanese. In Takamatsu the best udon is self-service and eaten fast from a bowl you carried to the table yourself. This is Kagawa — Japan's udon country, where on holidays the cars outside the noodle shops wear out-of-town plates and 'udon shop hopping' is an official form of sightseeing with its own bus.
Takamatsu is the capital of Kagawa on the island of Shikoku, its port the main gateway to the island until the Seto Ōhashi Bridge opened in 1988, and still the ferry port for the art island of Naoshima and for Shōdoshima. Sanuki udon — clean, simple, chewy — is the prefecture's soul food, and the city's shops serve it fast at self-service counters with noodle factories next door. Ritsurin Garden, built by the Matsudaira lords over more than a century and finished in 1745, ranks among the finest strolling gardens in Japan: seventy-five hectares, six ponds, thirteen sculpted hills and 1,400 tended pines, with Mount Shiun borrowed as its backdrop, a boat to pole you across the pond, and the Kikugetsu-tei teahouse serving matcha over the water as it did for the lords. The Yashima plateau above the city looks out over the Inland Sea and its islands at sunset.
Solo
Udon shop hopping — queueing with locals, three bowls before noon — is a solo mission at heart, and Ritsurin Garden and the Naoshima ferry fill the hours that remain.
Friends
Turning the udon crawl into a group challenge — rating each shop, debating broth — gives Takamatsu a food-tour energy that works brilliantly with friends, and the Naoshima day trip adds art.
Couple
Matcha at Ritsurin's teahouse over the south pond is one of Shikoku's most serene shared moments; the udon pilgrimage and a sunset ferry back from Naoshima balance contemplation with discovery.
- Ritsurin Garden took more than a century to complete — seventy-five hectares of ponds, sculpted hills and 1,400 tended pines, ranked among Japan's finest.
- The ferry to Naoshima and the art islands leaves from the harbour by the station — Takamatsu is the doorway to the Setouchi art circuit.
- Sanuki udon is Kagawa's soul food — self-service shops serve it fast, and udon shop hopping is an official pastime with its own bus.
- The Yashima plateau gives a clifftop panorama of the Inland Sea and its scattered islands at sunset.
Sanuki udon at a self-service shop — carry your own bowl, add the tempura, pay at the till — and then the next shop, and the next.
Matcha and a sweet at the Kikugetsu-tei teahouse in Ritsurin Garden, gazing over the pond the feudal lords looked at.
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