4 November 2025
Quiet town with great ramen
Tokushima Kagoyamachi
I knew that Tokushima would be quiet, I was hoping it would be, so that I can wander and observe a lot of closed garage doors in shopping malls. I was not disappointed.
The actual city area, is a little bit away from the station area (which even has a Mitsukoshi department store), over a river. The river appears to have cruises on it in little boats, but it was very dark, I am not sure what you would see. Right behind the city is a mini mountain with a cable car, I will investigate walking up there at night, hopefully there are lights.
The ramen however, was fantastic, the best yet.
Here is the station area. There are a couple of big department stores behind me. I will do more photos of that area on another night after a day of hiking.
To get from the station area to the old city area, you can follow the above ground walkways, which ensure the stores below get zero foot traffic. The little mountain with the cable car can be seen in the distance.
Time to look at everything being closed. Cyclists go down here at alarming speed. I believe it is called Kagoyamachi.
This bit is more colourful, with a few open shops mostly selling second hand clothes, furniture and laserdiscs.
I was a bit surprised that a lot of the crossing streets are semi pedestrianalized, but still basically closed. This was the busiest looking of about 8 similar streets.
The supermarket seemed to be a focal point for activity.
Along this street, every single one of these covers (at least 20) had deliberately been put back the wrong way around. It was chaos!
A lot of bikes, not many cars.
This little alley was particularly grungy looking.
I found the people, they were stuffed.
Running off the grungy alleyway, was a dark corridor, with a very uninviting Ramen shop. No pictures of the food, ticket machine, cash only, no English. It took me 30 seconds to figure out how to open the door. I had read reviews on google maps and the pics of the food there looked great, so I showed the guy a picture on my phone and he showed me which button to press on the ticket machine, and it was possibly the best ramen ever. We never exchanged a word.
Anyway... blow torched pork, a full egg, huge bamboo shoots, and thicker very square shaped noodles. Excellent.
Tomorrow is a hiking day, the trains here are CASH only, so I will need to leave enough time to figure that out and make sure I carry change and notes that are not too new for the ticket machine to accept.