Continuing our Japan Trip, we left Honshu and made our way down to Shikoku, the smallest of Japan’s 4 main islands. We took a bus from Okayama and arrived in Matsuyama, Ehime prefecture after 3 hours. We were greeted by rain unfortunately and so we only spent the first day visiting Dogo Onsen, which is famous for inspiring the bathhouse in Studi Ghibli’s Spirited Away.
The next day, we first made our way to Matsuyama Castle which is one of only 12 original castles across the entire country (for an explanation on original castles, you can check out my Matsue Travel vide). The castle was relatively small and also pretty new but the views from up there were pretty nice. Surprisingly, there were also a lot of tourists there, which I didn’t expect in this off-season.
Following the castle visit, we took a very scenic train ride alongside the ocean, to reach the small port from where we wanted to take a ferry to Aoshima, aka. Cat Island. Unfortunately, the ferry didn’t run that day because of the bad weather so we settled into a nearby cafe instead where they had a cute dog and cat. On our way back, we stopped at Shimonada Station, a train station that was often featured in movies and such for having a beautiful view over the ocean. We spent around an hour there, waiting for the next train before going back to Matsuyama.
Overall, there were some failures during this trip, but that’s how traveling goes sometimes. We then got a good night’s rest before heading back to the last destination of our Japan trip, Hiroshima.