Today we are leaving Kyoto and driving towards the neighboring island of Shikoku. There are 3 road links of the mainland with Shikoku and the one closest to us is near Kobe. In order to pass we have to take a bridge to the intermediary island of Awaji and then a second bridge to Shikoku. The drive from Kyoto to Kobe is how we expected the driving throughout Japan to be, suspended road zipping through skyscrappers with the city and the road being sandwiched between the ocean and the mountain.
The bridge known as the Pearl Bridge comes almost unexpectedly and it is huge with the largest middle span of a suspension bridge in the world. It is an impressive sight and we search for a place to stop after we arive on Awaji to take a better look of the bridge from outside the car.
We stop in the first rest area and even though the bridge is distant we enjoy the view and also the other different attractions in the rest area including a carousel, a Lovers Sanctuary and quite a few roadside fast food restaurants.
It seems like the whole island is here spending the day today. We decide to taste the fried octopus which is quite good before leaving to our next goal the Naruto Whirlpools which are under the bridge to Shikoku.
The parking lot at near the Naruto bridge is almost full but luckily someone just leaves and the attendant waves us in even though he is a bit annoyed at our parking skills in the tight place.
It turns out that we arrived at a prime time to view the Naruto Whirlpools which are best seen at low/high tide and there are a lot of Japanese tourists. We walk following the most obvious path towards the bridge and notice a catwalk going to a viewpoint further up which to our surprise is free to enter with no entry fee.
The Naruto Whirlpools are a natural phenomenon that happens when the tides force the water through the narrow straits between Shikoku and Awaji. It is interesting and there are a lot of boats trying to get as close as possible but it is not as impressive as we expected.
But still we enjoy the views of Shikoku and Awaji island with fishermen and trade boats plying the waters and the nice weather, today it is not as hot as it was the previous days.
The whirlpools themselves look more like rapids to us but they are huge and we admire the people who get really close to them in order to observe them from close up.
We observe them from our safe perch high on the bridge but still it looks a bit dangerous to us. As we enjoy the views suddenly it starts to drizzle so we have to get back to the car and continue on our journey.
The next place we explore is the location of a very popular Japanese movie “Crying Out Love, In the Center of the World” which is an adaptation after the novel “Socrates in Love” by Kyoichi Katayama. We found about it by accident and as we wanted to explore a bit we decided to do the short sidetrip. We park at the bottom of the hill and climb to the viewpoint which is a grand view of the bay and the small village surrounding the bay. There were quite a few locks chained to the fence a habit that appears to be more and more common in what are considered romantic places.
We enjoy the views and nearby is also a small shrine that we visit before returning to our car for the short trip to Yashima temple, our next goal.
