A Day in Matsuyama

So, the rain that was supposed to materialize never did, so we ended up with a cloudy, but very pleasant day to explore Matsuyama. First up, we headed to Dogokoen, a park just in front of the onsen market street that houses the ruins of Yuzuki Castle, a predecessor to Matsuyama Castle. Mostly, the ruins are just overgrown, but you can still see some bits of foundation. There's also a number of nice areas in the park, including a Gate Ball field. What is a Gate Ball field? Why, a place where they play Gate Ball. What is Gate Ball? I had no idea until today. Go here for more information. Who are "they" that play Gate Ball here in Shikoku? Mostly older to elderly people. In Fukuyama, we passed a very large Gate Ball park with a covered field that was holding some major competition, complete with trophies. It was quite a bizarre sight. We didn't take any pictures of Gate Ball, since the people were pretty serious about it and I didn't want to make anyone feel self-conscious. We did take pictures of the rest of the park, though.

Lots of beautiful garden areas and tons of flowering lily pads

The very first hot spring source in Matsuyama. 

There were museums, as well, but we decided to get going and take a pilgrimage to Temple #51, Ishite-ji, so o-henro Sumi could stop by, make an offering and get her book stamped. It was a short walk (about a mile) from our hotel. Along the way, we got a good look at the Matsuyama Daibutsu (Large Buddha) on top of a hill overlooking the city.

16m tall. This picture was taken from roughly two miles away.

The temple itself was very busy. Most of the temples we have visited in Japan were mostly tourist attractions with some Buddhist activity. In Shikoku, it is the opposite. Pilgrims come to pray throughout the day, ringing the large bell, then reciting the Heart Sutra, sometimes in front of several shrines, and other devout Buddhists come on their own to pray. We tourists are in the minority, which is rather refreshing.

Front corner of the temple grounds. There were many more statues and other adornments at this temple than I'm used to seeing in Japanese Buddhist temples.

The Pilgrim passes through the gate.

Small jade statue in front of the main gate representing a folk tale I should remember, but don't.

Three story pagoda

VERY rare example of women in Buddhist works in Japan.

Another resident of the temple

After gaining enlightenment, as well as a stamp in her book and yet more souvenirs (the temples love pilgrims like Sumi!) we headed back towards the station to catch a train to downtown and Matsuyama Castle. The whole Dogo Onsen area is famous, both for the onsen and for Botchan, a novel written by Natsume Souseki in 1906. It's one of those books every Japanese school kid has had to read and write an essay on, one of the most read books in all of Japan. Botchan (like Souseki himself) used to hang out at Dogo Onsen, so there are many little things in the area that pay homage to him, such as one of the trains, dubbed Botchan Ressha (more here)

An original Botchan Ressha from 1888. Still runs every day!

Great little station, Dogo Onsen Station is the end of the line, has two tracks and only single car trams run in and out of it.

Ten minutes and we were downtown. The castle is itself in a park surrounded by downtown, so we took a short walk up to the entrances where you could get on a ropeway or chair lift (chair lift?) to head up to the castle. It was just a 10 minute walk up a hill, but we decided to rest our legs and take the ropeway. At the last minute, we (I) decided the chair lift would be more fun. It was certainly that, but it was also quite a surprise.

Tucked between boutique stores and a post office, a cable car station.

Now, let me point out a few things about this chair lift picture above.
1) No strap harness or anything keeping your butt in the chair.
2) The elevation that you can't see here extends up to about 300 feet or so
3) About ten feet below the chairs is a chain link "net" with steel beams to catch your belongings (or you) if something were to fall
4) I swear the chairs are recycled from my old middle school desks. Thin plastic that bends and groans when you move.

So, this contraption would never, ever be allowed in the US, yet retired Japanese tourists were happily riding it up and down. I loved it.

The castle was very impressive. Easily the largest we'd ever visited and clearly built for defense. There were three separate gates as you scaled the hill towards the main castle building and spiraling paths approaching each one. And the walls were enormous.

View from the lower grounds of the castle. You can see the city of Matsuyama and the coast beyond

The main castle, complete with mascot. 

The second approach

Go ahead, fill free

So, the armor was too small for big American Gaijin, but not for little Korean-American Gaijin!

Some mikan gelato for the hard working samurai

The museum inside the castle was quite nice, as well. They had "Extra Big" slippers for us monster gaijin (usually my relatively small American size 9.5 feet can't fit in the normal slippers), though there was not a single doorway I could get through without ducking, and I'm just on the tall side of average at 6'. The exhibits were in English and Japanese and the castle was very well displayed.

Time for lunch! We saw a Coco Curry House on the way in and we had yet to try one. We attempted to a while back in Akihabara, but it was so busy we couldn't get in. The curry was good and, amazingly, spicy! The Japanese usually think food is hot if you add salt. This was hot enough to make a spicy food lover like myself sweat!

Sumi's Level 2 Spicy Chicken and Vegetable Curry with a side Potato Salad (a scoop of potato salad on top of a salad)

My Level 5 Spicy Vegetable Curry. You are required to prove you can eat one of these before they will allow you to order Levels 6-10. I don't know that I would want to order anything spicier than 5. Not shown: my side Egg Salad (cabbage salad with a hard boiled egg)

So, we still had yet to try the onsen, but needed to get some laundry done before tomorrow, so we got directions from the front desk and carried our laundry bags over to the Matsuyama Coin Laundry:

Yup, that's it

A hallway with some washers and dryers. This is bigger than most laundromats in Japan.

And finally, off we went to soak in Dogo Onsen!

We got in just before the high school field trip did. Seriously.

The onsen was nice, but certainly nothing special. The staff spoke zero English, but had a few pieces of paper with some instructions. We mostly got it right, though no one told Sumi that there were three baths she could try, so she ended up waiting for me for almost 20 minutes while I bath-hopped, assuming she was doing the same. We received a pamphlet afterwards helpfully explaining all of that to her. I think the allure is more historic for Japanese visitors. Personally, I prefer the baths in Beppu and Hokkaido, but it was still nice and relaxing. Plus we got to see the emperor's bath and chambers, including the emperor's personal toilet, which is a lacquer hole in the floor and a removable sand-filled box underneath. Yes, the emperor of Japan used a litter box.

To bed early for us. Tomorrow, if it's not storming, we are looking to do a long 100km ride into Uwajima, famous for many things, but thanks to YouTube, mostly for their fertility shrine and annual fertility festival.

And, the weird and/or cute from Japan. First, from yesterday, the little baby chick mascot that Sumi took a shine to is Bary-san, the mascot of Imabari. He has his own Facebook page. Now some more pictures:

Toshiaki-kun, the Matsuyama Castle Samurai mascot

Sumi and friends

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess they didn't secure naming rights.

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.

The Bridges of Hiroshima Prefecture

Up early this morning to pack up, assemble the bikes, hope everything works and hit the road. After much sweating, swearing and squashing we managed to get our bikes together, pack everything we brought, somehow, into our trailers and get out and on our way before 7:30. We were starting the trip by taking a ferry across a very narrow inlet to the first island of the day, Mukaishima. Honestly, we could have swam across the inlet, it was so narrow, but not with the bikes.

Reaching the other side, we started our trip on the Shimanami Kaido, a toll road that passes over six islands in a chain of small islands between the main island of Honshu and our destination, Shikoku. This chain of small islands is home mostly to fishermen and farmers, but also of some great scenery. Sub-tropic beaches along the Seto Inland Sea and mountains make for some pretty amazing vistas, most of which we didn't take pictures of, since se were busy biking :) But we did get some pictures of the bridges, which were pretty impressive themselves, and give a taste of the scenery.

Connecting the six islands of Mukaishima, Innoshima, Ikuchijima, Omishima, Hakatajimain and Oshima are five bridges, including the Kurushima-Kaikyo bridge (which is structurally three bridges, but it's all one long bridge path) that is the first three consecutive suspension bridge system in the world. It is over a mile long (4015m) and, if you are traveling to Imabari, is also mostly uphill. Just sayin'. Also  the Tatara bridge, one of the longest cable-stay bridges in the world (1480m) and has the border of Ehime and Hiroshima prefectures in the middle of the bridge. All the bridges were toll bridges and had separate lanes for bicycle, moped and foot traffic. The tolls were a very cheap 500¥ per bike for the entire trip. 

The first bridge, Innoshima, had a whole separate section UNDERNEATH the rest of the traffic for bikes and foot traffic!

A view of the Tatara bridge while approaching. Each bridge had an "on ramp" for the bikes that was about 1km long and all a spiraling uphill climb.

Hakata-Oshima Bridge. Note the sand beach on the sea. Most of Japan's coast to the Pacific is more rocky and severe.

Omishima Bridge. The smallest of the five.

We did take a detour while on Innoshima to check out the Pirate Castle (Suigun castle), which was the home base of the Murakami Pirates from the 14th to the 17th centuries. It boasted an active Buddhist temple and in-use Buddhist cemetery right next to it, and was pretty cool. When approaching one of the buildings, we heard a prayer service (think Buddhist chant) going on.

A view of the castle and outer building from the cemetery adjacent to it.

"Walk Of the Dead". A long path around the cemetery. Not sure what it signifies.

The rest of the day was spent pedaling, with occasional stops for pictures, all the way to Imabari, which was 73km from our starting point. This doesn't sound bad to cyclists, but add jet lag, constant up and down (often over 700m) and a 50# trailer draggin behind you, it was a pretty grueling first day out.

It reads "Beware of Animals". I didn't know we had wild boar in this area.

Palm trees and the ocean. Sumi approves.

Some more manhole covers.

I love the shopping streets in Japan and Asia in general.

The entire Kaido has great signs and markers. We were quite spoiled.

After a 9.5 hour day pedaling away in the sun, we arrived at Imabari, a small city on the north end of Shikoku. We headed to the train station and checked in with the Information desk. The pleasant lady informed us there was just a big cycling event that had occurred this weekend (we had seen lots of cyclists and knew something was going on, but not what) and, as a result, all the cheap hotels were booked. She did find us a not cheap hotel that is amazing. The room is so big, we were able to fit everything inside (including our bikes AND trailers) and not be cramped. Luxurious by Japanese standards. So, a good night's sleep here and we'll be off for Matsuyama tomorrow, if we can move enough to get out of bed, that is :)

P.S. No food pics today. We ate pretty much road food (granola bars, bread, etc) and even had konbini dinner (yogurt, cabbage salad in a bag, bread, ham and egg sandwiches). We'll have a real meal tomorrow night in Matsuyama.