Miki, Kagawa

Bags of *sanuki no yume 2000* flour sit stacked near the agricultural cooperative, and the scent of milled wheat drifts faintly across the flatlands that open up between the foothills and the town center. Miki, pressed against the northern edge of the Sanuki mountain range, runs long and narrow from its forested southern ridgelines down to the broad river plains fed by the Shinkawa and Kōtō rivers. It is not a destination town in any conventional sense — it is a place where university students, farmers, and longtime residents share the same weekday streets.

The festivals here have weight. At Amano Shrine, a lion's head weighing more than three hundred kilograms is paraded during celebrations — not a decorative piece but a physical fact, requiring many hands. The *mande gai* lion dance tradition moves through the community on its own schedule, rooted in the kind of local pride that does not announce itself to outsiders. Nearby, the old Kida County Office building, constructed in the Taishō era in a Western-influenced style, now functions as a community hall — its original bones still visible in the woodwork.

At Taiko no Mori park, the metasequoia trees planted in memory of botanist Miki Shigeru give the grove an unusual, almost prehistoric stillness. The Ikekawa Sculpture Museum offers a quieter counterpoint to the town's agricultural and industrial rhythms. Rare sugars — *kisshōtō* — are manufactured here, a product that requires precision and patience, much like the town itself.