Mountain Biking

Today our plan was to ride overland from Imabari to Matsuyama, home of the famous Dougo Onsen, the building that was the inspiration for the bathhouse in Miyazaki's "Spirited Away" as well as several of the henro temples (more on that in a moment). So, we were up early to get breakfast and get everything packed up so we could see a few sights in Imabari before making the 40km trek to Matsuyama. Breakfast was at a bakery in the station, which had a decent assortment of pastries and breads.

C'mon, you knew I couldn't resist. top tray, anpan, walnut bread and croissant.  Lower row croissant and "french pizza"

Before we left town, we wanted to see Imabari Castle, one of three "Castles on the Sea". Most Japanese castles were constructed on a peak or some other well defensible position. A few were built by the ocean, and Imabari was one of those. It was also just a few blocks from our hotel.

The castle itself was quite impressive, with its six story main building and numerous smaller outer buildings and a very large functional moat. Inside the main building was a very good museum with a huge collection of samurai armor (the biggest we've ever seen, including that at the National Museum in Ueno) and, from out of nowhere, a serious natural history section that included fossils, animals of the region and shells of local sea life among other things. It was a very nice collection that had absolutely nothing to do with the castle, but was a pleasant surprise.

Imabari Castle and....some guy on a horse.

Guy On a Horse

One of the shrines in the castle grounds

A view of the outer buildings from the top of the keep.

and a view of the moat. It is over 15' wide in parts and 10' deep

Unfortunately, like most museums in Japan, you aren't allowed to take any pictures of the displays

Um, Sumi, what are you doing with your phone?

After the castle, we went in search of one of the 88 Kukai-related temples in the area that pilgrims visit and pray at. Our choice: number 57, Eifukuji. It was a beautiful, smaller temple with no main gate.

Several pilgrims came to pray while we visited

Pilgrims strike this at the start of their prayer ceremony. Made me kind of want to be a pilgrim for a day. Or a few minutes, anyway.

Not at all sure what the frog on the table symbolizes, but I thought it looked cool.

Sumi has an ambition to be a henro, a Buddhist pilgrim. Of course, she's not Buddhist, but the idea of walking to all the temples and getting your book stamped sounds cool, right? Well, when she told me about this, I was picturing getting like a point card stamped (get a free sub after twelve purchased). I had no idea what the book and the stamp meant.

The book is a thing of beauty, a hardbound book with detailed sketches of each temple and some inscription related to it. The three stamps and calligraphy are added to a blank page across from the sketch by temple workers in front of you when you finish your visit, 

So, she only has 87 more to go! We'll probably visit a few more during the next week or so.

After Eifukuji, we were off to our next destination, Matsuyama. The henro guidebook suggested taking the road along the coast. We were going to do that, but looking on Google Maps showed it wasn't a very scenic ride and you didn't actually see the coast very much. So we chose to go inland through what looked like a pass between mountain peaks.

Silly us.

Hey, who put this mountain here?

It turned out to be 3.5 hours of climbing winding roads up a mountain on a road that often had little or no shoulder with frequent traffic. And that was just to get through the first 20km. It was a beautiful climb, though, that ran alongside a heavily dammed river with frequent tiered rice paddies.

tiered rice paddies. The water is piped from the river and flows back to the river.

A much smaller bridge, this time

Spectacular, even, but not much consolation as we slogged our way up the mountain, dragging our 50# trailers with us. It wouldn't have been so bad if there had been any kind of consistent shoulder, but portions had no shoulder and just a small guardrail between you and a 100' drop with cars passing you and regular intervals. And then came the tunnel

Yup, 2.8km of tunnel. Sumi's trying very hard to look happy about this.

Fortunately for us, the extremely long tunnel had a raised maintenance sidewalk! One wide enough for our trailers, to boot. So it was long and loud, but the trip through the tunnel, which we were quite dreading after the last few miles of dangerous roads, was almost relaxing. What followed was the whole reason we climbed this mountain in the first place. The ride down! In about one hour of near constant downhill, we covered 18 miles (with stops before two smaller tunnels and the occasional water break) and almost didn't pedal until we reaches Matsuyama and Dougo Onsen.

Cheap baths (¥360) and a lot of history. The oldest onsen in Japan

Our hotel, which is partnered with a Youth Hostel we stayed at in Miyajima, turned out to not only be a very nice hotel, but also right next door to the onsen. A prime location! We'll be here for the next day or two, checking out Matsuyama while the rain passes (coming in tonight, up to 3 inches by tomorrow night). Tonight we finally had a chance to go out to a real restaurant for dinner. After the mountain climb, we were exhausted and didn't want to go too far. Luckily there is an Italian restaurant in one of the almost 100 hotels around Dougo Onsen that was open and smelled too good to walk by without stopping in. The dining room was full, but outdoor seating was open and it was a perfect night.

Caprese! Freshest tomatoes I've had in a long time.

Fresh garlic bread!

Margarita Pizza

Spaghetti Napolitano. If you look carefully, you will see what look like small hot dogs. That's what passes for Italian Sausage here in Japan. They weren't quite hot dogs, but certainly weren't sausage.

Strawberry Shortcake. Sumi wasn't letting us leave without one

Ok, hope that makes up for the lack of food pics earlier on! Tomorrow we'll be visiting Matsuyama castle, if its not raining too badly, and probably Ishite temple, as well, so Sumi can get another page stamped. I'll leave you with a few images of the silliness that is Japan, at times.

Every city or area has a mascot. Ehime Prefecture has this guy: a baby chicken with a  bridge for a crown and a ferry under his right wing, is my closest guess. He's for sale all over. Sumi couldn't resist. He now rides with her, hanging from her handlebar bag.

Warning sign by one of the lakes made by the hydroelectric dams along the river we biked by.