Matsuyama Trips & Tours

Few cities wear their history quite so comfortably as Matsuyama. Matsuyama Castle, one of only a dozen originals left standing in Japan, looks down from its hilltop perch over a town that still revolves around Dōgo Onsen, a hot spring so old it appears in eighth-century poetry and so atmospheric it's widely believed to have inspired the bathhouse in Spirited Away. The evening ritual here is worth savouring: slip into a yukata, clatter down the shopping arcade in wooden geta sandals, and soak in the alkaline waters. By day, the literary thread continues. The haiku poet Masaoka Shiki was born here, and Natsume Sōseki set his beloved novel, Botchan, amidst the city's streets. Beyond town, the beautifully preserved wax-merchant houses of Uchiko make for a lovely half-day interlude, and the Shimanami Kaido – 70 kilometres of island-hopping cycling across the Inland Sea – starts just up the road in Imabari.