Kochi with a toddler (2–3) 3 spots
Kochi is warm, wide-open coast behind a wall of mountains. Bonito is seared over a straw fire at the table, and Anpanman was drawn here, so his face is on the local trains and his museum is up in the hills.
Kochi Prefectural Makino Botanical Garden
Shikoku's only full-scale botanical garden, 8 hectares of hillside holding over 3,000 kinds of plants.
Stroller OK · Nursing room · Changing table · checked Aug ’26
A covered market of more than 60 stalls, two minutes from Kochi Castle.
Stroller OK · Nursing room · Changing table · checked Aug ’26
One of Japan's three great limestone caves, 175 million years old, with a free museum.
Nursing room · Changing table · Family restroom · checked Aug ’26
Fumu-fumu Hiroba is made up of areas such as the Tosa Field and the Field of Learning. You can eat on the lawn north of the Exhibition Hall or on any bench in the garden, and the spots marked with a rice-ball symbol on the garden map are picnic areas where you may spread a leisure sheet and have a packed lunch.Admission is 850 yen for adults and free for high-school age and under. Sheets may only be spread on the marked spots, and parasols and tents are not allowed in. Balls, badminton sets, frisbees and similar play equipment may neither be brought in nor used, so leave them in the car. Any rubbish from a packed lunch goes home with you.
Almost none of the eating places here has tables of its own, so you can buy whatever your child will actually eat from one of the more than sixty stalls, bring it to the one table your family has taken, and eat together. When you are done, leave the dishes stacked and the staff clears all of it away.Seats do not belong to any one stall; they are shared, and Kochi prefecture's tourism site describes the place as one where you eat shoulder to shoulder with local people. The whole hall is non-smoking, and pets may not be brought in. It opens at 10:00 Monday through Saturday and at 9:00 on Sunday, though each stall keeps its own hours.
The sightseeing course needs no booking: buy a ticket on the day and it takes 30 to 40 minutes. An escalator runs up the slope to the entrance, so a small child can ride it up and save their legs for the cave itself. Inside there are stretches barely wide enough for one person, and steep stairs, to get through hand in hand.The escalator only goes up; coming back you walk down the stairs, a wide flight with a handrail. The route runs from the parking lot up the shopping street, five stone steps, then the escalator and that flight, and finally the cave mouth. Leaving your bags in the free lockers (coin-return type) stops you catching on the narrow parts. It is about 15°C inside, so carry a jacket.