Matsuyama, Ehime Pref. – As your flight from Tokyo makes its gradual descent in direction of Matsuyama, the prefectural capital of Ehime, there’s loads to seize your gaze by the window.
Beneath lie the placid, glinting waters of the Seto Inland Sea with its myriad islands that comprise the western finish of the Setonaikai Nationwide Park. To the south rise the rugged mountains of Shikoku, nonetheless wild and so thickly forested they continue to be a thriller terrain to most individuals in Japan. And, immediately forward, there’s Matsuyama — previously a proud samurai fortress city and now a bustling fashionable metropolis and the biggest on the island.
As quickly as you arrive, hop onto one of many metropolis’s classic streetcars heading to Dogo Onsen, a sizzling spring district that was already famend a thousand years earlier than it impressed Hayao Miyazaki’s 2001 movie “Spirited Away.” The stately wood premises of its honkan (principal constructing) public bathhouse date solely from 1894, however in that point the therapeutic waters have eased the fatigue of numerous guests, from imperial family members to white-clad, leg-weary vacationers on the Shikoku henro pilgrimage path that runs the complete circumference of the island.
