Haneda to Tokushima Airport
Our day started with an early morning domestic flight to Tokushima, a city on the east coast of Shikoku. We had some great views of Yokohama and Mount Fuji as we were flying quite low.
It was only a short hour long flight, so we were quickly in Tokushima where we collected our hire car.
Ottamanegi
For our first stop of the day, we drove over Onaurto Bridge to the southern tip of Awaji Island, mainly to see a giant onion… and a nice view!
This was technically part of the Uzu no Oka Onaruto Bridge Memorial Museum, but because Awaji is famous for growing huge onions, there was a lot of onion themed things about!
We also had an onion-y brunch – an ‘award winning’ onion burger and Mike won the local mascot (not an onion, but a bitter orange!) in a crane game.
Naruto Uzu-no-Michi Walkway
After our meal, we retraced our drive over the bridge, stopping at the shikoku side of it in order to visit the Naruto Bridge walkway. This walkway goes under the bridge and allows you to see the large whirlpools that form during tide changes in the Naruto straight.
We were unfortunately waiting in a queue for the car park for quite some time, so once we managed to get to the viewpoint under the bridge it was towards the end of the window the whirlpools were occurring, but we did still spot a few.
Eskahill Naruto
Next to the bridge walk was an observation deck that you could get to via a really long escalator ride
Road Station Itano
Now it was time to start the longer drive into central shikoku towards where we would be staying for the next 4 nights.
We stopped at a large michi-no-eki (roadside station) which are a bit more exciting than motorway services in the UK! They usually have lots of local produce, treats and snacks.
We had been planning to go to a ropeway and temple later in the day, but with the delay at the bridge, it was getting a bit too late, plus jetlag was starting to make me very tired, so we decided to head straight to our accommodation.
Tiny House Otoyo Strength
The the next four nights we would be staying at Ting House, Otoyo Strength, a lovely little self contained house built from Hinoki wood. It was the perfect size for two and had the most snuggliest of beds. It was run by the neighbouring crossfit gym, both of which had been built to help revitalise the very rural area we were in.
