Shikoku Feature

Every corner of Shikoku has a special dish, cuisine, or crop. Ehime is famous for mikan—clementines—and between November and March you can't walk a country mile without a farmer handing you a bag. Ehime is also the nation's main cultivator of tai, or red snapper; tai-meshi is rice that's cooked with chunks of the fish, usually in a flaming tin pot. Kagawa-ken's sanuki-udon is widely thought to be the nation's best, and Tokushima-ken's delicious Iya-soba, made from the valley's hearty strand of buckwheat flour, is even tastier if you've pounded the dough yourself at a soba dojo. Sand-grown at Naruto are the best satsumaimo, purple Japanese sweet potatoes, and imo-taki are popular across the island in autumn, during potato-baking parties for watching the full moon. The most renowned cuisine styles are in Kochi: tosa-ryori and sawachi-ryori, different ways of serving enormous amounts of delicious fish, particularly slices of lightly seared katsuo (skipjack tuna).