Solo travel in Japan has particular advantages that Kagawa amplifies. The prefecture’s scale means that a single traveller can cover meaningful distance without a car, the transit network is legible enough to navigate without guides or group arrangements, and the food culture — built around fast, cheap, exceptional udon available from early morning at counters where a solo diner attracts no more attention than a bowl of noodles requires — is fundamentally suited to eating alone. For the solo traveller, Kagawa offers focus: one of the world’s great noodle cultures, a legendary island of art, and the final spiritual stretch of Japan’s most famous pilgrimage circuit.
The Udon Crawl — Solo and Budget
Eating Sanuki udon as a solo traveller is close to the ideal mode of consuming it. Most udon shops in Kagawa operate a self-service cafeteria format in which you move along a counter, make your selection, add toppings, pay, and find any available seat. No reservation, no waiting for a group to organise itself, no menu negotiations. You arrive, you eat a very good bowl of noodles for ¥150 to ¥500, and you leave to find the next shop.
Building a Morning Crawl
A productive solo udon crawl starts before 9:00 am, when the best shops are open and operating at full quality before the first tourist groups from Osaka or Tokyo arrive. The standard approach is to eat a small bowl (ko-size, roughly half a portion) at each stop, allowing three to four shops in a single morning without discomfort. Between shops, walking rather than using transit keeps the pace honest and gives you time to absorb the neighbourhoods that surround the shops.
The area around Takamatsu Station has several reliable shops within a ten-minute walking radius. Marugame city, 30 minutes west by JR Yosan Line express (¥570), has a concentration of excellent shops within walking distance of the station, including some of the most locally frequented places that see relatively few overseas visitors. The town of Utazu, one stop further west (¥640 from Takamatsu), has shops that open as early as 5:30 am and are frequented almost entirely by people who live nearby.
What to Order
For a first visit to a Kagawa udon shop, kake udon — the simplest preparation, noodles in hot dashi broth with nothing added — is the most honest way to assess the quality of both the noodles and the soup. The variations worth exploring once you have established a baseline are kamaage (noodles served hot from the cooking water in a bucket with a separate cold dipping broth), zaru udon (cold noodles on a bamboo tray with dipping broth), and bukkake (cold noodles with concentrated dashi poured directly over them, usually finished with grated ginger and a raw egg). All are available at most shops. All cost under ¥500 for a standard serving.
Naoshima — Cycling Solo
Cycling Naoshima alone is one of the most satisfying single-day activities in Kagawa. The combination of physical movement through an island landscape, the ability to stop whenever something catches your attention, and the absence of the social logistics that accompany group travel creates the right conditions for actually experiencing what the island offers rather than completing a prescribed route.
A Practical Solo Day
The first ferry from Takamatsu Port to Naoshima departs in the early morning and arrives at Miyanoura Port in time to collect a bicycle before most visitors have appeared. Standard bicycle rental runs around ¥1,000 per day; electric-assist bikes are available at slightly higher rates. The southern coastal road from Miyanoura to the Benesse House area follows the water closely, with views through pine trees to the sea and the smaller islands beyond.
The Chichu Art Museum opens at 10:00 (closed Mondays) and the Art House Project sites in Honmura village open at the same time. A solo traveller can structure the day independently: the museum first while it is quietest, the outdoor installations and village sites in the afternoon when the museum crowds begin to peak, and a final circuit of the southern shore on the bicycle before the last ferry back to Takamatsu. The regular evening ferry to Takamatsu departs around 17:00 (check current timetables); arriving at the ferry terminal slightly early on a bicycle allows you to watch the island recede as the boat moves north through the evening light.
Budget Accommodation on Naoshima
For solo travellers who want to stay overnight, Naoshima has guesthouses and small minshuku inns in Honmura village that charge around ¥4,000 to ¥8,000 per person per night for a simple room, often with breakfast included. The notable advantage of staying overnight over the single-day approach is access to the island at dawn and dusk, when the light through the pine trees and across the water is at its most atmospheric and the tourist presence minimal. Book in advance; accommodation on the island is limited.
The Shikoku Pilgrimage Final Stretch
The Shikoku 88-temple pilgrimage is the most famous Buddhist walking circuit in Japan, covering roughly 1,200 kilometres around the island of Shikoku and taking the dedicated foot pilgrim 40 to 60 days to complete. Kagawa Prefecture holds Temples 66 through 88, the final stretch of the circuit and the one that carries the weight of completion — both physically, as tired legs make the last days harder than any of the earlier ones, and spiritually, as the approach to Temple 88 brings the end of a journey that for dedicated pilgrims has consumed months of their lives.
Walking the Final Temples
Temples 75 through 88 are concentrated in and around the Sanuki plain of central Kagawa, making them the most accessible section of the pilgrimage for overseas visitors who want to experience part of the circuit without committing to the full walk. Temple 75 is Zentsuji, the birthplace of Kobo Daishi — the most sacred site on the entire circuit. Temples 76 through 88 can be walked over three to four days through the flattest terrain of the entire pilgrimage, concluding at Okuboji on the slopes of the mountains at the eastern edge of the prefecture.
The experience of walking even a few days of the pilgrimage as a solo traveller is substantially different from any other kind of tourism. The white henro coat (hakui, available at Temple 1 or at any temple supply shop for around ¥1,500) marks you as a pilgrim rather than a tourist, and the reciprocal kindness offered to pilgrims by residents along the route — osettai, the traditional gifts of food, drink, or money given freely to henro — is still practised actively in rural Kagawa.
Temple 88 — Okuboji
Temple 88, Okuboji, sits in the mountains southeast of Takamatsu and is reachable by bus from Shido or Nangoku area stations. For solo travellers completing the final stretch on foot, the approach through cedar forest on the last morning of the walk is a culmination that rewards everything that preceded it. The temple bell, which arriving pilgrims ring as they complete the circuit, is struck by pilgrims who have walked a day or six weeks — the temple makes no distinction.
For those with more limited time, visiting Zentsuji (Temple 75) as a single day trip from Takamatsu gives direct contact with the most spiritually significant point on the circuit and, on any given weekday, the experience of watching white-robed pilgrims completing their journey.
Takamatsu City for the Independent Traveller
Takamatsu has an unusually good pedestrian centre for a Japanese city of its size. The Chuo Shoten-gai covered shopping arcade — one of the longest in Japan at roughly two kilometres — connects the area around Takamatsu Station with the Kotoden tram terminal and the commercial blocks beyond. The arcade is covered against rain, internally climate-controlled in summer, and contains an uninterrupted sequence of shops ranging from 100-yen stores and convenience pharmacies to bookshops with travel sections, craft stores, and independent cafes.
The Marugame-machi shopping district, perpendicular to the main arcade, has been substantially renovated and now contains a higher concentration of independent boutiques, small restaurants, and cafes in refurbished buildings. Solo travellers who enjoy wandering commercial districts without a fixed agenda will find the Takamatsu city centre more interesting than its low profile in travel writing suggests.
Budget and Accommodation
Takamatsu has a Dormy Inn at around ¥8,000 to ¥12,000 per night for a single room, which is the most practical budget base for a solo visit. Dormy Inn properties include free late-night ramen and access to a rooftop onsen bath — the Takamatsu property’s onsen has city views. The hotel is close to both Takamatsu Station and the ferry terminal, making early morning ferry departures to Naoshima or Shodo Island logistically simple.
For the pilgrimage section, ¥3,000-per-night pilgrimage lodges (zenkonyado) exist along the final temple stretch and offer the most immersive experience for those walking multiple days. Reservations should be made in advance by phone or, increasingly, through booking websites that cover rural accommodation.
Daily budget guide: A Kagawa solo day can be done comfortably for under ¥5,000 in Takamatsu — udon for breakfast and lunch (¥300 to ¥800 combined), Ritsurin Garden admission (¥430), and a walk through the covered arcades with no purchases. A Naoshima day adds the ferry (¥520 each way), bicycle rental (¥1,000), and museum entry (¥2,100 for Chichu). A pilgrimage day has minimal costs beyond transit.