Shikoku Mura

The structures, picturesquely situated on the wooded slope of Yashima Hill, include thatch-roofed homes of farmers and fishermen, century-old cottages used by lighthouse keepers, a rustic tea-ceremony house, a 250-year-old rural Kabuki stage, rice and soy-sauce storehouses, and sheds for pressing sugar and for producing paper out of mulberry bark. There's also a suspended bridge made of vines, once a familiar sight in Shikoku as a means for crossing the island's many gorges and ravines -- if you look closely, however, you'll see that this one is reinforced by cables.

Quick Tips:

http://www.jnto.go.jp/eng/ is a great website to go for pricing information.

Best Way To Get Around:

Leave Okayama station at 7:10am on Marine Liner 3 for Takamatsu (1 hour). Change trains in Takamatsu to local train on Kotoku Line for Yashima (20 minutes).

It takes at least an hour to stroll through the village (and there are lots of stairs). I heartily recommend a visit if you haven't had the opportunity to see similar villages in Takayama, Shirakawago, or Kawasaki, since they convey better than anything else rural life in Japan in centuries past. Also in Shikoku Mura is the Shikoku Mura Gallery, designed by famed Japanese architect Tadao Ando, displaying mostly 19th- and 20th-century French paintings (works by Renoir and Bonnard are especially significant); calligraphy; Chinese Buddhist images; and ancient glassware, earthenware, and bronze mirrors.