Beyond Japan's Golden Route: Road-Tripping Setouchi’s Coast and Valleys

Kurashiki

After landing at the Okayama airport and driving about 45 minutes, my first major stop was Kurashiki, a historic canal district where white-walled warehouses line narrow waterways beneath graceful willow trees. I checked into the Kurashiki Kokusai Hotel, whose lobby centerpiece is a two-story-high artwork commissioned in 1963 by Shikō Munakata, a famous woodblock and folk artist.

I dropped my bags and stepped out into the Bikan Historical Quarter. The neighborhood is beautiful and feels like stepping into an Edo-period painting. Small shops, galleries, and cafés are housed in former merchant buildings that have been restored and repurposed as businesses to remain part of everyday life while preserving the distinctive architecture. A 20-minute riverboat tour here is well worth the time; seeing the historic buildings from the water gives you a completely different perspective.

From Kurashiki, it’s a short drive to Kojima, the coastal district credited as the birthplace of Japanese denim. At the Betty Smith Jeans Museum & Village, I got to customize my own pair of jeans, which proved to be one of the more physically demanding activities of my trip. Selecting from a variety of rivets, buttons, and patches, I learned how to use manual press tools to create a singular souvenir that I’ll actually wear. I didn’t realize how hard it would be to push down on the lever until I tried it myself.

After a rigorous jeans-making session, I was ready for lunch at Takuzen just down the road for an introduction to the food of the Seto Inland Sea. The restaurant’s sawara meal serves Spanish mackerel three ways: grilled, raw, and tempura, alongside rice and miso soup. It was a great reminder that regional Japanese cuisine is shaped as much by what’s fresh and available locally as it is by tradition.

Naoshima and Takamatsu

From Kurashiki, a 45-minute drive took me to Uno Port, where I began a journey to Naoshima, a small island known for its contemporary art. A 20-minute ferry ride on an orange-and-green vessel that made me feel like I was in a Wes Anderson film took me to Miyanoura Port, where one of the first things I saw upon disembarking was one of the late artist Yayoi Kusama’s iconic spotted pumpkins.

Naoshima is easy to explore by electric bike or on foot, with enough of architect Tadao Ando’s concrete buildings and installations spread across the island to fill an entire day. The newly opened Naoshima New Museum of Art showcases a collection centered on contemporary art from Japan and Asia. The permanent collection at the Chichu Art Museum, which requires advance reservations, is built around three artists: French impressionist Claude Monet, American artist James Turrell, and American sculptor Walter De Maria. Also on Naoshima is Benesse House, a museum-hotel whose collection leans toward European and American contemporary art.

From Naoshima, I hopped back on an hour-long ferry to Takamatsu Port. In Takamatsu, I visited Ritsurin Garden, which flies under the radar compared to Kyoto’s famous gardens. Dating back more than 400 years, the expansive landscape is designed so every turn exposes a new composition of ponds, bridges, and sculpted pine trees. I kept stopping at different viewpoints because the garden seemed to rearrange itself every few minutes. Hiraiho Hill, where you can get a view over the lake of a beautiful arched bridge that feels quintessentially Japanese, is a highlight.

I also visited the Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum. The studio and garden of Japanese American sculptor Isamu Noguchi are preserved much as he left them, and the museum grants an intimate look at the artist’s creative process, with unfinished sculptures sitting alongside completed works carved from local stone. Knowing that Noguchi spent his life moving between Japan and the United States made the space feel particularly poignant to me. His studio wasn’t just a place where he made sculptures; it was a physical reminder of how much his work was shaped by moving between two cultures.

Elsewhere in Takamatsu, at Nakano Udon School, I learned how to knead, roll, and cut Sanuki udon before sitting down to enjoy the finished noodles. A major highlight of this experience was getting a chance to stomp on the dough with my bare feet (the dough is inside a plastic bag).

For this leg of the trip, I stayed at Kyomisanso Hanajukai, a hotel overlooking the Seto Inland Sea with a top-floor public onsen that has panoramic views of the city. As someone with tattoos, I was excited to discover that I could book a room with a private hot spring bath. I ended my day with a kaiseki dinner, a traditional multi-course Japanese meal served in a private tatami-matted room in many ryokans (traditional Japanese inns). Multiple small, beautifully plated seasonal dishes arrived over the course of a few hours, turning dinner into an experience in itself.

Iya Valley and Naruto

The roughly three-hour drive from Takamatsu to the Iya Valley was the longest stretch of the trip, but also when the landscape changed most dramatically. After days of ferry rides, contemporary art museums, historic streets, and ocean views, the scenery grew greener and more mountainous.

The final stretch into Iya felt like entering an entirely different Japan, one you might only see in an old film. The roads twisted through steep mountains along the valley and Iya River, with glimpses of traditional homes set into the hillsides. The deeper I traveled, the more remote it felt, which was exactly what I’d been hoping for when venturing beyond Japan’s Golden Route.

At the end of that drive, I arrived at Tougenkyo-Iya, a collection of carefully restored centuries-old thatched farmhouses scattered throughout the Iya Valley, conserving both the architecture and the surrounding landscape. A dinner of locally made soba noodles around the traditional irori hearth, mountain views from every window, and an evening beneath a clear sky set the tone for the kind of experiences that can’t be replicated in a city hotel.

The next day, I set out to cross the historic Iya Kazurabashi vine bridge, suspended high above the river. The narrow wooden slats offer plenty of views of the rushing water below, which was exciting right up until I remembered that I was standing on a bridge made of vines. After making it safely across the bridge, I headed nearby to a sightseeing boat through Oboke Gorge, where lofty rock formations and sparkling water revealed an entirely different side of Japan’s natural beauty.

I made my way to watch the Naruto Whirlpools, one of those natural phenomena that are only found in a few places in the world. Enormous tidal currents swirl beneath the Onaruto Bridge, viewable from the elevated Uzu no Michi walkway. Make sure to check the tide table before visiting so you don’t miss it like I did. I arrived at the wrong point in the tide cycle and saw only a few unimpressive swirls. The best time of day to catch this natural phenomenon is within about 90 minutes of high or low tide, often in the morning and late afternoon based on the time of year.

That night, I checked into AoAwo Naruto Resort, located just minutes from the Naruto Whirlpools and an ideal base for exploring Tokushima’s coastline. Rooms overlook the emerald waters, and the restaurants showcase local specialties including Naruto sea bream and Awaodori chicken.

Awaji and Osaka

The next morning, I crossed onto Awaji Island. The Onaruto Bridge, the same span visible from Uzu no Michi the day before, carries the Kobe-Awaji-Naruto Expressway and is the primary road link between Naruto and Awaji Island.

Awaji Island may be small, but there’s so much to enjoy on this idyllic piece of land just one hour from Osaka. As someone who loves a beautiful flower field to frolic through, I started at Awaji Hanasajiki, where the sunflowers were at their peak, stretching toward panoramic views of the ocean and providing what was essentially a giant outdoor photo studio.

Elsewhere on the island, I got hands-on with traditional Awaji clay at Gallery Tsuchiza. Through a workshop, I made my own jewelry and learned about the history of this medium and how the owner wants to keep the local clay tradition alive. But my favorite stop on Awaji was Zenbo Seinei, where I sat down for a guided meditation and listened to the cicadas humming around the open-air retreat. It felt like a surround sound for the natural world. Afterward, I took part in a matcha tea ceremony, which was a welcome excuse to slow down.

After a week of exploring some of Japan’s Setouchi region, it was time to head back to Osaka. After about an hour’s drive, Osaka’s neon lights and busy streets felt almost startling. Suddenly there were 24-hour restaurants, packed sidewalks, Don Quijote signs glowing overhead, and all the familiar chaos of Japan’s big cities. I was happy to be back, even if the noise was a reminder that not long before the loudest thing around had been the wind moving through the trees at Tougenkyo-Iya.