During the 2018-2019 academic year, the authors had the opportunity to begin work on a unique multi-year virtual heritage "Virtual Shikoku Pilgrimage" (VSP) project. The main goal of this project is to design and develop an immersive virtual landscape exploration platform that uses 3-D digital technologies, including the Unity video game engine development platform and 3-D modeling software such as Blender and SketchUp, to recreate the cultural and natural landscapes of the temples and surroundings that make up the 750-mile (1,200-kilometer) 88-temple Buddhist pilgrimage around the perimeter of the island of Shikoku, Japan. This project aims to utilize the virtual landscape platform to embed digital stories and media elements within an immersive virtual space that allows teachers and students of a wide range of disciplines to more broadly delve into the experience of the Shikoku Pilgrimage from their own homes and classrooms. Those who access the completed VSP platform will be able to virtually traverse the changing landscapes of the routes, enter temples, and interact with others along the pilgrimage just as one would do in Shikoku. The first phase of the VSP project focused on background research, initial design ideas, the research trip to Japan in May 2019, and the initial design and development of a prototype focused on the first three temples in the pilgrimage. This article details how, over a period of two semesters, the VSP project leaders took six undergraduate research fellows to Japan with a focus on two main components of the VSP project: digital recreation of the natural and cultural landscape as well as narrative content for the embedded digital stories that users would explore as they navigated the virtual landscape platform.