This story is part of the August 18 edition of Sunday Life. See all 15 stories . Travelling in Japan can sometimes feel like stepping into a sci-fi movie.
From cafes staffed by robots and bullet trains that travel at 300km/h to underground farms and high-tech toilets, a Japanese holiday can take you back to the future. But this beguiling country also has a very different side. Head away from the big cities and neon lights and soaring skyscrapers are soon replaced by verdant forests and tranquil temples.
This is a place where time slows down, where old traditions flourish and where your soul has room to expand. Here are three places to discover Japan done differently. Splendid solitude in Shikoku One of the woven bridges in the Iya Valley in Shikoku’s Tokushima Prefecture.
Credit: Getty Images If you have ever experienced a Tokyo rush hour, you probably think of Japan as a crowded country. But even on Japan’s four largest islands there are still plenty of places to escape. Nowhere is this truer than in the Iya Valley in Shikoku’s Tokushima Prefecture.
Long a byword for remoteness, it’s hidden amid a series of rocky gorges and steep mountains, a wild landscape where deer, boar and monkeys roam. Loading That isolation made it a natural sanctuary for the Taira clan back in the 12th century. The losing side in the Genpei War, which paved the way for the first samurai government in Kamakura, they fled to the Iya Valley in the hope its inaccessibility would provide shelter f.