Matsuyama: Why Locals Consider This Japan's Most Underrated Castle Town

# Matsuyama: Why Locals Consider This Japan's Most Underrated Castle Town

If you think you need to visit Himeji to see a "real" Japanese castle, you've been misled by every guidebook printed in the last twenty years.

## Why Matsuyama Stays Off Most Itineraries — And Why That's Changing

Matsuyama sits on Shikoku, Japan's fourth-largest island and — let's be honest — its most overlooked. Most international visitors blaze through Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka, maybe tacking on Hiroshima. Shikoku barely registers. There's no shinkansen connection. The fastest route from Tokyo involves a flight to Matsuyama Airport (about 90 minutes on ANA or JAL, often ¥8,000–¥15,000 if booked early) or a long combination of bullet train and limited express via Okayama. That friction is exactly what keeps the city feeling like it belongs to the people who actually live there.

But things are shifting. Domestic tourism campaigns have been pushing Shikoku hard since the late 2010s. Peach Aviation now runs budget flights from Kansai. The Shimanami Kaido cycling route — connecting Shikoku to Hiroshima Prefecture via a chain of islands — has exploded in popularity, and Matsuyama is the natural starting or ending point. Cyclists roll into town sunburned and hungry, and the city delivers.

What they find is a place with roughly 500,000 residents, a functioning streetcar system that hasn't changed much since the postwar era, a castle that's genuinely among Japan's best, and a hot spring with over 3,000 years of history. There's no tourist-industrial complex here. No streets lined with identical souvenir shops selling matcha Kit-Kats. Instead, you get shotengai covered arcades where grandmothers buy mikan oranges, university students crowd into ramen joints, and nobody is performing "traditional Japan" for your camera.

That's the whole point. Matsuyama isn't a destination that tries to impress you. It just *is* — and that's increasingly rare.

## Matsuyama Castle: What Makes It Special Among Japan's Twelve Original Keeps

Japan has thousands of castles, but only twelve retain their original wooden keeps — structures that survived war, fire, earthquake, and the Meiji government's demolition orders. Matsuyama Castle is one of them, and among that elite group, it's arguably the most satisfying to visit.

The castle sits on Mount Katsuyama, 132 meters above the city center. You can take the ropeway or chairlift up (¥520 one way, ¥1,000 round trip), but locals mostly walk. The Ninomaru Historia Garden route takes about 20–30 minutes through forested switchbacks and offers better views of the defensive walls than the ropeway crowd ever sees. The stone walls here are massive, constructed in a complex climbing-turn layout designed to funnel attackers into kill zones. Stand in the narrow passages between gates and you can feel how it works — the architecture tells you exactly how you'd die.

The keep itself, rebuilt in 1854 after a lightning fire, is compact and steep. The wooden staircases are original, worn smooth by centuries of feet, and they're practically ladders. Inside, you'll find armor, scrolls, and — more importantly — 360-degree panoramic views from the top floor: the Seto Inland Sea to the north, the Shikoku mountains to the south, the city's grid of tram lines below.

What makes Matsuyama Castle different from, say, Himeji is accessibility and atmosphere. Himeji is magnificent but exhausting, swarmed with tour buses, and surrounded by a somewhat sterile park. Matsuyama Castle sits in a living park where locals jog, walk dogs, and eat bento on benches under cherry trees. During hanami season (late March to early April), the castle grounds become the city's gathering place — no reserved tarps from tour companies, just families and friends.

**Pro tip:** Take the chairlift up (it's open-air, single-seat, and genuinely fun) and walk down through the Ninomaru route. You get the best of both worlds, and the descent is easy on the knees.

## Dogo Onsen Beyond the Bathhouse: How Locals Actually Use the Hot Spring District

Yes, Dogo Onsen Honkan is the famous one — the 1894 bathhouse that supposedly inspired the bathhouse in Miyazaki's *Spirited Away*. It's beautiful, it's historic, and after its extensive renovation (completed in 2024), it's once again fully open. The Kami-no-Yu (Spirit of the Gods) bath on the first floor costs ¥700 for adults and gives you a basic but authentic soak. The premium Tama-no-Ishi course (¥1,280) adds a private rest room and tea with dango.

But here's what the guidebooks skip: locals don't usually bathe at Honkan. It's crowded, touristy, and — frankly — small. They go to **Tsubaki no Yu** instead, a public bathhouse just a two-minute walk away that was rebuilt in 2017. It's modern, spacious, costs only ¥400, and has the same alkaline spring water. No waiting in line. No time limits. This is where Matsuyama residents actually start or end their day.

The Dogo district itself extends well beyond the bathhouse. The shotengai arcade leading to Honkan is worth a slow wander — pick up a **jyako-ten** (fried fish cake, about ¥150–¥200) from one of the street vendors or grab a bottle of local Ehime mikan juice. Several small ryokan in the area offer day-use bathing packages if you want a more private experience: **Dogo Kan** and **Chaharu** both offer excellent day plans in the ¥3,000–¥5,000 range that include lunch.

After bathing, locals do what the Japanese call *yuagari sanpo* — a post-bath stroll. In yukata and wooden geta sandals (many ryokan and even some hotels lend them), they drift through the arcade, eat soft cream, and sit in the free foot baths scattered through the district. There's one right in front of the station, and another behind the Honkan near the Tama-no-Ishi entrance.

**Local secret:** The foot bath at **Dogo Park** (Dogo Koen), a five-minute walk uphill behind the Honkan, is almost always empty. It overlooks the rooftops of the onsen district and is particularly beautiful at dusk.

## The Literary City: Following Natsume Soseki and Masaoka Shiki Through Quiet Neighborhoods

Matsuyama punches absurdly above its weight in Japanese literary history, and once you know the story, the city reveals itself differently.

**Natsume Soseki**, one of Japan's most important modern novelists, lived in Matsuyama in 1895 as a young English teacher. He hated it — the provincialism, the gossip, the weather — and channeled that misery into *Botchan*, a satirical novel that every Japanese person reads in school. The irony is that Matsuyama embraced the book entirely. The city named a baseball stadium after it. There's a Botchan train — a small steam locomotive replica (¥1,300, runs on the tram line between Dogo Onsen and Matsuyama Station) — and a Botchan Karakuri Clock near Dogo Station that performs a mechanical show every hour. Soseki's boardinghouse is gone, but the **Soseki Memorial Museum** (¥200) in the hills south of Dogo reconstructs his room and traces his brief, unhappy tenure.

Then there's **Masaoka Shiki**, born in Matsuyama in 1867, who almost single-handedly modernized haiku and tanka poetry. His childhood home is preserved as the **Shiki Memorial Museum** (¥400), a beautifully designed space built into a hillside in Dogo Park. The exhibits are mostly in Japanese, but the architecture alone justifies the visit — Tadao Ando–influenced concrete and glass opening onto views of the surrounding hills. Pick up the English audio guide at the front desk.

The best way to connect these two lives is on foot. Walk from the Shiki museum through Dogo Park, past the old Isaniwa Shrine (modeled after Kyoto's Iwashimizu Hachimangū, with steep stone steps and almost zero tourists), and down through the residential streets toward the Soseki museum. This ninety-minute walk passes through neighborhoods where the literary texture is quiet but real — stone markers with haiku carved into them appear on random street corners, and the pace is slow enough that you actually notice them.

## How to Live Like a Local: Tram Routes, Kissaten Culture, and the Neighborhood Izakayas Tourists Miss

Matsuyama's tram system is the skeleton key to the city. Five lines crisscross the compact urban center, and a single ride costs a flat ¥200. Buy an **Iyotetsu 1-Day Pass** for ¥800 and ride unlimited — it also covers the buses. The trams are old-school: some date to the 1950s, with wooden floors and manual fare boxes. Sit in the back, watch the city slide past, and get off whenever something looks interesting. Line 5 from JR Matsuyama Station to Dogo Onsen is the essential route, but Line 3 through the Okaido shopping arcade area drops you in the real commercial heart of the city.

Matsuyama has a kissaten (traditional coffee shop) culture that rivals Nagoya's. Skip the Starbucks near Okaido and find **Salon du Café Amande** or the tiny **Noel Coffee** near Matsuyama-shi Station, where a master roaster pours hand-dripped coffee for ¥450–¥600. These places have velvet seats, jazz on low volume, newspapers on bamboo holders, and a strictly no-laptop atmosphere. You sit. You drink. You think. That's the format.

For dinner, avoid the cluster of izakayas directly around Dogo and head to the **Niban-cho and Sanban-cho** entertainment district south of Okaido. This is where salarymen and university students eat. **Gotochi-ya** serves Ehime's regional dishes — jakoten, tai-meshi (sea bream rice, done Matsuyama-style with raw fish over rice, around ¥900–¥1,200), and sato-imo taro simmered in dashi. **Koshiro**, a standing-only yakitori joint on a side street off Niban-cho, serves excellent chicken skin and tsukune for ¥130–¥180 per skewer, and the regulars will talk to you if you speak even a few words of Japanese.

**Pro tip:** At most Matsuyama izakayas, ordering **tai-meshi** gets you a choice between two styles. "Matsuyama-style" is raw sea bream over rice with a raw egg and dashi — essentially a luxurious ochazuke. "Uwajima-style" is the cooked version. Ask for Matsuyama-style. It's the one you can't get anywhere else.

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*Matsuyama doesn't shout. It doesn't need to. Spend three days here, ride the trams, soak until your skin wrinkles, eat sea bream over rice in a tiny place with no English menu, and you'll understand why the Japanese who know this city guard it a little selfishly.*