Setoda

The Shimanami Kaidō is a cycling route strung across the Seto Inland Sea on a chain of enormous bridges, and we’d set out to ride the whole thing in a day, heads down, being efficient. Setoda ruined that plan in the best way. We coasted down off the Tatara Bridge into a harbour town that smelled overwhelmingly of lemons, saw a shop selling lemon gelato, and simply stopped. Lia bit into a lemon gelato and said this was the best wrong turn we’d ever made. We stayed the night.

Kōsanji, the Temple One Man Built

Setoda’s centrepiece is almost too much to describe. Kōsanji is a temple complex a businessman named Kōzō Kōsanji spent thirty years and a fortune building in memory of his mother — replicas of famous shrines from all over Japan, gilded and lacquered and crammed together in gorgeous excess. We wandered through gates modelled on Nikkō, down into a lurid underground passage depicting the Buddhist hells, and Lia kept whispering “this is insane” with total delight. It is kitsch and it is sincere at the same time, which somehow made it moving rather than silly.

The Hill of Hope

Above the temple, a newer addition changes everything: the Miraishin no Oka, a hilltop entirely sculpted from white Carrara marble. Staircases, arches, and abstract shapes in dazzling white rise against the blue of the Inland Sea, and at the top a café serves — of course — lemon drinks. We climbed in the late afternoon when the marble had gone warm and gold, and the whole sea opened up below us, dotted with islands and threaded by the great bridges we’d cycled over. It felt less like a temple and more like standing inside a sculpture the size of a hill.

Shiomachi and the Lemons

The old harbour lane, Shiomachi, is where I fell for the town itself. It was once a prosperous shipping street, and its wooden shopfronts now hold cafés, an old public bath turned gallery, and shop after shop selling lemon everything — cakes, syrups, soaps, the fruit itself heaped in crates. Ikuchijima grows more lemons than almost anywhere in Japan, and here they aren’t a novelty, they’re the economy. We bought a bag from an old woman who pressed an extra one into Lia’s hand, unasked, and we ate them sliced with salt on the sea wall as the ferries came and went.

Getting There

Setoda sits on Ikuchijima island, roughly midway along the Shimanami Kaidō between Onomichi in Hiroshima and Imabari in Ehime. Most people arrive by bicycle — rental cycles can be hired at either end and returned at terminals along the way — but there’s also a direct ferry from Onomichi to Setoda port, and buses cross the bridges if legs give out. We rented bikes in Onomichi, rode two bridges to reach the island, and were very glad we’d booked a night rather than trying to push straight through to Imabari.