After leaving Ehime (see last blog post,) we drove along the northern coast to get to the car park of Takaya shrine. According to google, this was a very popular location and it seemed like you could drive right up next to the shrine, park up, and then leave. A perfect stop for people on a road trip wanting to see some beautiful sights but with no time to climb a literal mountain. When we arrived though, it seems 2D maps had been very deceiving. The car park was at the bottom of the mountain and although along the x axis, the shrine was basically a few metres ahead of the car park, in reality, it was over an hour’s walk up a mountain. Irritated that we had driven past so many nice shrines to get to this one, and we had an appointment to pick up food at a cafe which closed in an hour and it was just under an hours drive away, we were gutted to not be able to climb the mountain. On maps it also said there were many little shrines on the route, this was also a lie and the pictures people had uploaded for those shrines were just views from the very top. Instead, beautiful tori gates stood marking the way. They were beautiful, just not what we were hoping for. We walked around for about 20 minutes, stretched our legs and went to the bathroom before giving up and realising we really needed to get off to the cafe or we wouldn’t be eating for the next couple of days.
Finding food in Japan is really hard when you have milk and soy allergies. Often, I eat fish on these kinds of trips because something like sushi (which is just fish and rice) is my only option. Most people know that I am vegan, and I know this breaks the rules of my chosen diet, but what can you do in such situations? I can’t starve and I always look for places that will provide us with vegan options of course but usually they are just not possible because the vegan alternative here is soy 99% of the time. This cafe we were driving to though gave me multiple options of what I could eat. They are an organic cafe in Takamatsu, which we got the following from:
- A red bean and oat hamburger meal each
- A vegetable salad and rice box
- A rice box with 10-15 little sides
- A raw, vegan, soy-free cheesecake
- A raw, vegan, soy-free tiramisu
We arrived at the cafe (Raw style Cafe Verita) five minutes late, but I had messaged the owner in advance and she was so unbelievably kind and accommodating and told us not to rush, she’d be in the cafe closing up for some time afterwards so it was no trouble. Upon collection she was just as understanding. Honestly cannot recommend the place enough. From the cafe we walked to a local park and ate our burger meals and our desserts. They were all to die for. Really, really delicious. It felt so unbelievable that we’d been able to find this in Japan considering I’ve never had a meal so tailored and delicious and varied in the nearly three years we’ve lived here. Cannot thank the cafe enough. We kept the rest of the food cool and ate the rice box with sides in the evening when we arrived at the hotel, and the other box the next day after our rafting adventures. See my next blog for details on both of those.
For now though, back to Kagawa. We were now in Takamatsu city, and we decided to walk around looking for souvenirs before going to a teahouse that offered different varieties of houjicha (roasted Japanese tea) and matcha (Japanese green tea) in a latte with options for a non-soy plant milk. We got one of the house blend houjicha almond lattes and the recommended matcha almond lattes, both unsweetened. They were so tasty, not bitter at all. The matcha was the smoothest either of us had ever tasted and we put it down to the time, care and skill of the maker. He washed his equipment by hand after every customer and took his time making every drink to perfection, and you could tell when you drank it. It was so delicious! Any vegan looking for good options in Takamatsu will have to check out this place (it’s called Sabi).
After being shopped out and refreshed, we headed up Mt.Yashima. Unlike our fiasco earlier, we could drive most of the way this time and, even after hours, the shrines area wasn’t closed off, so although we didn’t get a goshuin, we still got to pray at the shrine and go to watch the sunset over Takamatsu city. A woman with a nice camera round her neck, took some photos of me and Sammy with the sunset, which I’ll put below with the rest of the pictures, but honestly, nothing can do justice to the sight we saw. All the islands, the blue water with the city lighting up for the night and the sun setting over the mountains was so beautiful. We felt an inner calm after a day of long travels. Little did we realise that would be the peak of what was soon to be the steepest slope down into chaos, when the next few hours became literally the scariest of our lives. More about that in the next blog though, as we crossed the border into Tokushima prefecture, so that’s a story for another day. Until then, please enjoy the pictures we got from Kagawa!
