Vanlife in Shikoku, Japan’s least visited main island

Vanlife in Shikoku, Japan’s least visited main island

there is a side of Japan for a week we ditched the classic golden route grabbed a camper van and explored Japan’s best kept secret this isn’t the Japan you think you know so stick around we’re showing you something completely different Shikoku is one of Japan’s four main islands but it’s also the smallest the least populated and the least visited by international tourists with no bullet trains in sight having a car is essential our journey started in Osaka where we picked up this tiny mini van from Samurai Campers our home for the week if you’re interested in a van tour and tips on camper vanning in Japan check out my other video which I’ll link here good morning everyone or almost good afternoon today we are on our very first road trip in Japan and we are not just in any car we are in a camper van you can see the back behind me so day 1 was mostly about driving as Shikoku is quite a distance away crossing from Osaka to Kobe over Awaji Island before finally reaching Shikoku this is the steak bowl that I think cost about thousand eight hundred yen so what do you think this is normal normal oh no that’s quite sad okay let me try mine and only a few hours into the trip we’ve unknowingly already made our first mistake one that costs us more than expected it tastes a bit meh it appears that our parking has cost us 1700 which is an insane price man like come on it’s only 2 hours so yeah we randomly parked in a times parking lot and had no idea parking in the city could be that expensive don’t make the same mistakes we did and make sure you check the parking prices in the region before you pick a parking lot after lunch it was my turn to drive I actually hadn’t driven in about six years so I was quite nervous but thankfully the van was small and easy to handle the van was so light I could literally feel the wind pushing it as we cross the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge from Honshu to Awaji Island I kinda feel like my car is moving without me moving it YF: oh is it then we hit another issue this 600 CC van it struggles on even the tiniest slopes every time I hit the gas it sounds like a dying horse trying its best that’s the stupid car sia freak really can’t go up slope this is not even that high of a up slope man right we are now at the Awaji Hanasajiki which is this beautiful flower garden full of daffodils let’s go take a look wow it is so cold it looks like they have a lot of things related to cows here and we saw a sign earlier that says that half of this prefecture’s cow milk come from Awaji Shima cows so I guess that’s probably why you know there’s like so much cow related stuff over here it’s a pretty beautiful garden and honestly it’s like free of charge so highly recommend you to come not sure whether you can see over there in the far distance that’s actually the ocean can you see that wow OK so right now it’s the end of day 1 for us we pretty much did nothing but drive a lot but right now we are at aratae no yu which is a public bath I’m gonna go take a bath and I’ll share with you my experience although I can’t show you hazukashi (embarrassing in japanese) hahaha one fun fact is right now we are currently in a town called Naruto that was the very first anime I’ve watched in my life Naruto and it made my grades drop by point two in GPA back in secondary school but it’s one of my favourite animes how was your first public bath experience YF: uh honestly YF: I don’t think I tried YF: anything too different from the normal experience YF: besides from the sauna YF: but the um YF: 12 baseball boys that came in YF: talking about sex YF: and oppai (boobs) YF:was a bit of a mood killer YF: yeah yeah serious YF: I don’t really YF: don’t really know what they were saying though YF: I just heard like OPPAI OPPPAI YF: and then like sex no one was talking in my bath I wish someone was talking in my bath this is what we’re having for dinner Mos Burger first time eating Mos Burger in Japan in case you were wondering why we were eating fast food in Japan we were having dinner at eight PM which is considered quite late for that region so it’s either this or izakayas after dinner we headed to a roadside station our first stop for van sleeping by the time we arrived everything was closed and it was pitch black thankfully the toilets were super clean oh my God this sign at the at the side says that recently there’s a lot of people stealing toilet paper in case you guys were wondering where I was brushing my teeth is in front of this thing that looked like half a urinal and half a shower and guess what the toilet paper still have the little corners little triangle folded ends so cute oh my god it’s already eleven PM and it’s 17 degrees outside we’re currently at this michinoeki we arrived at about maybe 9:30 and we brushed our teeth and basically set up everything you know move our luggages to the front cause there’s not enough space here and set up our um dual sleeping bag we’ll see you tomorrow Goodnight good morning we’re gonna go brush your teeth this place is called the Daiku no Sato and the ku means nine referring to Beethoven Symphony No. 9 in the past in this town I guess the town of Naruto there used to be a German prisoner of war barracks somewhere during their era uh the German prisoners of war actually performed Beethoven No. 9 for the first time in an area to be exact it is the oldest known performance in Asia that we know of which is why it became relatively symbolic and they named the whole place here after it and there’s also a bunch of like I guess German related stuff over here they actually moved part of the barracks to build some of these structures here they also built a German house over here and there’s I think a statue of Beethoven right in the corner as well is this really Beethoven Ludwig von Beethoven 1770 to 1827 oh he only lived for 57 years after exploring the roadside station our first stop of the day was Ryozenji Temple you might be wondering what’s so special about this temple there’re tons of temples in Japan Shikoku is home to the Shikoku Henro which is a famous Buddhist pilgrimage that connects 88 temples across the island Ryozenji is the first temple and the official starting point we were excited to catch a glimpse of the pilgrims many dressed in white robes straw hats and holding wooden staffs the white coat also known as hakui in Japanese symbolizes purity and readiness for death not something you worry about now but back then people did die on this journey it’s really good!! as in I like it I’ve never has udon like that before currently we are in this town in Kagawa specifically Higashi Kagawa which is the east side of Kagawa we just had some delicious udon and then we took a walk down to the sea and uh there was this little cafe called Berami they had no menu all they had were two choices tea and coffee we both got coffee and they served us bread as well it’s a very small town and the the people here are mostly quite old like I think the woman was saying most of them are like 65 years old and above all the youngsters have probably moved to I don’t know Osaka or something like that barely see anyone actually yeah actually we barely saw anybody and I think out of the 10 people we saw like all of them were above the age of 50 90% of all the gloves used in various situations like playing baseball golf ski and all those they were made in Kagawa specifically the east side of Kagawa um and they opened this museum the one behind me in 2,008 that they can teach people you know the history and I guess the process of making gloves this glove is made for goalkeepers that play soccer and this one is for the F1 there are some gloves that are a lot more interesting than others as well there’s this category of gloves here called Ero Kakkoi which literally means erotic and cool I’m assuming it’s for females so you get the ero kkakoi you get some furry ass gloves and also those where you can have your nails painted on the outside the museum also had a small exhibit on the history of glove making showing how they use rigs to cut leather precisely and quickly some of the tools honestly look like medieval torture devices so sad we were here to visit the Shikoku village but everything is closed it’s like most things are closed on Tuesdays anyway most of the attractions we wanted to go are all closed today unfortunate we are just heading up this very long flight of stairs that uh leads us to another temple we’re just gonna take a look cause we’re here anyway but it does look like it might rain very soon we’re just gonna make the best of our day I guess oh my God oh shit this staircase is really long eh it appears that it’s also closed so yeah we’re just gonna admire the view over here looks amazing by the way whoo so this is our second udon of the day these are bukkake udon bukkake literally means to pour over which means you just pour the broth straight onto the noodles just like so oh shit this thing is so good the tempura batter is so good Kagawa is also known as the udon Prefecture famous for its signature sanuki udon these thick chewy square shaped noodles get their signature texture and shape from a traditional food stomping kneading process look at how Sanuki udon is made look they freaking step on it wearing socks our last stop of the day was a bit of a weird one one of our last stops today was this area called the Slow poke park and we thought that it’s gonna be like a small little theme park I don’t know there’s like maybe 1,000 square meters for you to walk around and see Slowpoke and other Pokemons around the area but guess what it is just a regular playground for the locals and you see tourists coming over here taking photos of the Slowpokes it’s quite funny it’s quite cute um definitely don’t regret coming here if you don’t know slowpoke is a character from the legendary Japanese anime Pokemon it was raining a little but nothing can stop us from taking photos with slowpoke we ended too late for dinner everythinge else is closed which is why we settled for 7 11 food let me show you what we got he’s still committed to the udon thing so he’s still having udon for dinner very good very good but meanwhile I’ve downgraded to a ramen I think um ha and we are getting some veggies cause it’s so hard to find veggies in Japan yeah so if you’re camper vanning and you’re trying to eat proper maybe try to end your day at like 6 or something it’ll be way better Ohayo gozaimasu yesterday night was very cold I think it was like 9 degrees or something though but this sleeping bag it says it should be able to withstand like 5 degrees but I feel like you can’t you can’t anyway today we’ll be hiking up Mount Tsurugi for Day 3 we are finally heading into the mountains for our first hike but the challenge wasn’t the hike itself it was getting there we had to drive our tiny 660 CC camper up long winding and very steep mountain roads some stretches look like one way lanes but nope they were two way my heart was thumping the whole time as I squeeze past oncoming cars wooo this is scary look at how many bends there are man this is just crazy we drove about 1 hour plus to reach this place which is the Tsurugi chair lift area so at first we wanted to take a chair lift up because we didn’t have a lot of time to actually hike the whole thing up I think the whole round trip might take up to four hours which is really long but after coming here we realized the chair lift is closed so we’re thinking of walking up right now so we are gonna be finding the trail head um and then we’re gonna rush up as fast as possible somehow guess we start from there as we walk here Mount Tsurugi is actually part of the hyakumeisan which is the hundred famous mountains in Japan which is why we chose to walk up this particular mountain and yeah today’s weather is pretty good it’s gonna be sunny the whole day strangely you you still see snow around seems like it’s 5 or 6 degrees Mount Tsurugi is not that tall of a mountain it’s probably just around 1925 or something like that The walk up is gonna be around 4km we think the trees here all look so bare despite it being like spring already who would have thought there’s so much snow in spring man this is like a human bowing with a duck on top I don’t think it’s meant to be bowing though we reached a small little house might be a camping place there’s a little guy sitting over there hey guy Pinocchio-san hello made a new friend today oh my butt so cold how are you are you cold this place is so well maintained there’s a platform here man we are at the peak of Mount TSURUGIIIIII YEA! Japan 100 mountains- number *4 to omoimasu (I think) Jesus Christ hands damn cold Sia this is not easy man we didn’t bring crampons this trip we just didn’t expect this whole route to be all snow especially not in spring ai yo yo yo oh no we just finished Mount Tsurugi yay quite hungry trying to find the next place to eat but I guess just there’s just nothing open in the mountains right now a lot of things are closed Yea its not peak season for tourism so a lot of things are not open the chair lifts are not open I think the the Vine Bridge might not be open as well um the food places that we pass by weren’t open so we’ll see where we can get some food else we might need to just eat snacks somehow it was so cold I don’t know what happened my fingers are swelling and I can’t take off my ring the next place I’m about to show you made me a little sad thank you so much for watching my Shikoku Part 1 vlog if you liked it please subscribe to my channel and give this video a like and I’ll see you at the next one

[4K] [Eng sub] For 7 days, we traded Japan’s golden route for something completely different.

We picked up a tiny 660cc campervan in Osaka and set off for Shikoku—Japan’s least visited main island. Our route took us through Kobe, across Awaji Island, and into Tokushima for daffodil gardens and coastal sunsets. In Kagawa, we ate udon for three meals straight before tackling one of Shikoku’s highest peaks, Mount Tsurugi.

This is rural Japan: slower, quieter, and full of surprises.

📍 Destinations in this video:
Kobe, Awaji Island, Tokushima, Kagawa, Mount Tsurugi [Shikoku]

📍 Hike Details:
🏔 Trail: Mount Tsurugi [Starting from Tsurugi chairlift]
⏳ Duration: Day hike
🌋 Mountains: Mount Tsurugi

For more hiking and travel content:
📸 Instagram: / badgalchenchen
🎥 TikTok: / badgalchenchen

Chapters:
0:00 Intro to Shikoku
1:24 Kobe
2:44 Awaji Island
3:43 Tokushima
6:07 Kagawa
13:42 Mt Tsurugi