❖ Pick-up at your hotel

09:00

Your guide meets you in the lobby of your hotel in Kochi City. From there you board a private vehicle and head west into the Niyodo River valley.

❖ Ino Paper Museum

09:25 - 10:25 (1:00 h)

Opened in 1985 to promote Tosa Washi, the Ino Paper Museum celebrates a paper-making tradition that goes back over a thousand years. Tosa Washi is renowned for being remarkably thin yet durable, with the finest patterns reaching just 0.03 millimetres in thickness. Inside the museum, tools, raw materials and historic pieces tell the story of the craft, and you can watch live demonstrations of paper-making and try your hand at making a simple souvenir such as a postcard or coaster.

❖ Nakatsu Gorge

11:15 - 12:15 (1:00 h)

Formed over three hundred million years ago by shifting tectonic plates, Nakatsu Gorge is regarded as a power spot in the Shinto tradition. You will walk a 2.3 kilometre trail alongside the Niyodo-blue water, looking out for the seven small stone statues of the Gods of Fortune hidden along the way. At the end of the trail the path enters a cool, misty hollow that opens onto Uryu-no-Taki, a twenty-metre waterfall crowned with a shimenawa rope, the sacred boundary that, in Shinto belief, divides the realm of the gods from our own.

❖ Lunch at Yuno Mori

12:20 - 13:10 (50 min)

A short drive brings you to Yuno Mori, on the upper reaches of the Niyodo River next to the Nakatsu Valley. Here you sit down to a Japanese-style lunch built around local ingredients. The signature Yunomori Bento is a generous spread of dishes that showcase vegetables grown along the Niyodo River, with each course reflecting the seasons of the surrounding hills.

❖ Blue Brew

13:20 - 13:50 (30 min)

After lunch, a stop at a small craft beer retreat. The owners trained in the United States before settling in Niyodogawa Town to brew their own beer using the fresh, clear water that gives the area its name. You can sample their craft beers on the terrace, with the Shikoku mountains and the Niyodo River laid out in front of you.

❖ Sawatari Green Tea Plantation

14:25 - 14:45 (20 min)

Kochi is full of green tea plantations, many of them perched on impossibly steep mountainsides. Sawatari is one of the most photogenic - neat rows of bright green tea hedges set against the deep blue of the Niyodo River below. You walk through the plantation and hear about life and craft on a working tea farm.

❖ Cafe Asunaro

15:00 - 15:35 (35 min)

Cafe Asunaro sits within the Sawatari plantation and is run by tea farmer Noriaki Kishimoto, who built it to share his green tea through food and drink. The whole menu uses tea grown on the plantation, from green tea udon to subtly sweet green tea waffles. On a fine day you can sit out on the terrace, looking down over the river and valley.

❖ Return to your hotel

17:00

The drive back through the Niyodo valley delivers you to your hotel in Kochi City, ready for the evening.