10 Days Off the Beaten Path — San'in, Setouchi and Shikoku

Straight from the airport to a shrine that predates the histories which describe it, then west to a cape where the lighthouse marks the point the sun sets into the Japan Sea. A short first day, and deliberately so.

• 11:00

  2.5 hours
  

  Izumo Taisha — Ancient Shrine of Marriage & Destiny

  Shimane

  Japan's oldest shrine by tradition, dedicated to the deity of marriage and fate, with a straw rope over its hall weighing five tonnes.

  Insider note

  Clap four times here, not the usual two — twice for yourself and twice for your future partner. The shrine is Japan's principal site for enmusubi, the tying of relationships, which is why the crowd skews toward couples and toward women travelling in pairs. The main hall is closed to the public; what you approach is the worship hall in front of it, and the enormous shimenawa rope hangs at the Kagura-den, a separate building most visitors reach second. Walk the approach from the Seidamari-no-Torii downhill — Izumo's is one of the few sando in Japan that descends toward the shrine. In the tenth lunar month, called Kannazuki (the month without gods) everywhere else in Japan, this province alone calls it Kamiarizuki, the month with gods, because they are all said to be here.

• 13:30

  1 hour
  

  Izumo Soba — Three-Tier Warigo Bowl Tradition

  Shimane

  Buckwheat soba served cold in three stacked red lacquer bowls, with the whole grain milled in — darker and stronger than soba anywhere else.

  Insider note

  The warigo system has a method: pour the tsuyu onto the top bowl, eat it, then tip that bowl's remaining sauce into the second rather than pouring fresh. Doing it the other way marks you out instantly and nobody will say anything. Izumo soba is milled with the husk, which is why it is grey-brown and tastes considerably more of buckwheat than the pale Tokyo version. The shops in front of the shrine are all decent; queues at 12:30 are 20–30 minutes and at 14:00 are none. ¥900–1,400.

• 15:00

  2 hours
  

  Hinomisaki Shrine & Lighthouse — Sacred Sunset Cape

  Shimane

  A vermillion shrine complex on a rocky cape, and beside it the tallest stone lighthouse in Japan, facing the sunset over the Japan Sea.

  Insider note

  Twenty-five minutes by bus or car north-west of Izumo Taisha and almost nobody makes the trip. The shrine is unusual: two halls, one to the sun goddess and one to her brother, and the pairing is the point — Izumo's mythology is the counterweight to the imperial version. The lighthouse (¥300) can be climbed, 163 steps, and the view along the cliffs is the reason to. Time this for late afternoon: this coast faces due west and the sunset over the water is the best on the route. Last bus back to Izumo-taisha-mae is usually around 17:00–18:00 — confirm it before you commit to the sunset.

West along the coast to a UNESCO site that looks like nothing: a village of 400 people, a wooded valley, and 600 mine shafts in the hillsides that once supplied a third of the world's silver.

• 10:30

  4 hours
  

  Iwami Ginzan — UNESCO Silver Mine Heritage

  Shimane

  A 16th-century silver mine and its merchant town, listed by UNESCO for producing a third of global silver at its peak — and for the forest that grew back over it.

  Insider note

  This is not a mine tour. Vehicles are banned from the valley, so the site is a 2.3km walk (or a ¥700 rental bicycle) from Omori village to the Ryugenji Mabu shaft, which is the one open to visitors — 600 metres of hand-cut tunnel, ¥410, low ceilings, cold. The other 599 shafts are sealed and visible only as dark mouths in the trees. What UNESCO actually listed is the relationship between the mine and the woodland: it was worked for 400 years without deforesting the valley, which was almost unheard of. Omori village itself is the better half — a single street of preserved merchant houses and samurai residences, a bakery, and a shop selling locally made brooms that has a small international following. Allow four hours and do not try to compress it into two.

• 17:00

  1 hour
  

  Matsue Wagashi Sweets — Tea Culture Capital

  Shimane

  Matsue is one of Japan's three great confectionery cities, a legacy of a tea-obsessed 19th-century lord — and the sweets are still made by hand.

  Insider note

  Matsue's seventh lord, Fumai, was a tea master, and 200 years later the city still has more wagashi makers per head than anywhere outside Kyoto and Kanazawa. Saiundo and Ippoen are the old names. Buy wakakusa or natane-no-sato at a counter and eat it with matcha rather than treating it as a souvenir — these are seasonal, unstable sweets designed to be eaten within days. ¥200–400 each. Most shops close at 18:00.

• 18:00

  1 hour
  

  Lake Shinji Sunset — Ranked Top 100 Sunsets in Japan

  Shimane

  A shallow brackish lake on the western edge of Matsue, whose sunset is ranked among the hundred best in Japan and deserves it.

  Insider note

  The composition everyone comes for is the Yomegashima islet, a small pine-covered rock with a torii, silhouetted against the water — and it works from the lakeside path by the prefectural art museum, which stays open until 30 minutes after sunset specifically for this. Free. Check the sunset time and be there 20 minutes before; the best light is in the ten minutes after the sun is actually down, which is when most people leave.

A garden you are not allowed to walk in, deliberately framed through windows as if it were painting; then one of Japan's twelve surviving original castle keeps, and a flat-bottomed boat around the moat that still encircles it.

• 09:30

  2.5 hours
  

  Adachi Museum of Art — World's Best Japanese Garden

  Shimane

  Ranked Japan's finest garden every year since 2003 — six landscape gardens designed to be viewed only from inside the building, through windows framed as scrolls.

  Insider note

  You cannot enter the garden and that is the entire concept: the founder built the museum so that each window frames a composition, with a hanging-scroll alcove holding a live view of the mountains behind. Six full-time gardeners maintain it and the borrowed hills behind are also owned by the museum, so nothing can be built on them. ¥2,300, and the Yokoyama Taikan painting collection inside is world-class and largely ignored by visitors chasing the garden. Go at opening — the main viewing corridor is a single line of windows and by 11:00 there are three rows of people at each. Free shuttle from JR Yasugi station, 20 minutes, timed to trains.

• 13:00

  1.5 hours
  

  Matsue Castle — Original Black Castle National Treasure

  Shimane

  One of only twelve original castle keeps left in Japan and one of five designated National Treasures — black, wooden, and never reconstructed.

  Insider note

  The distinction that matters: this keep is the 1611 building, not a concrete rebuild, and you climb it on the original steep wooden stairs in socks. It survived the Meiji demolition orders because local citizens bought it back. Go up to the top floor for the 360-degree view over the lake — the observation deck is the original one. ¥680. The grounds and moat are free and are a genuinely good hour on their own.

• 14:45

  1 hour
  

  Horikawa Moat Boat Ride — Roofed Boat Through Castle Town

  Shimane

  A 50-minute circuit of the castle moat in a small roofed boat, passing under seventeen bridges — four of which are so low the roof folds down and everyone ducks.

  Insider note

  The roof-lowering is not a gimmick; the bridges are genuinely that low and passengers flatten themselves onto the benches. ¥1,600 for a day ticket letting you get on and off at three landings, which is how to use it — ride a section, walk the samurai street, ride again. In winter the boats have a kotatsu, a heated table under a quilt, which is one of the more pleasant things available anywhere in Japan in February. Boatmen sing on some runs. Departures every 15 minutes.

• 16:00

  1 hour
  

  Lafcadio Hearn Residence — Ghost Story Writer's Home

  Shimane

  The samurai house where Lafcadio Hearn lived in 1891, and the museum beside it — the Greek-Irish writer who introduced Japan's ghost stories to the West.

  Insider note

  Hearn lived here for barely fifteen months and wrote about the garden from a specific desk, positioned so he could see it while working — the house is preserved with the desk in place. The adjoining museum (¥410, combined ticket with the house ~¥600) was renovated with English throughout, which is unusual for a small regional museum and makes it far more rewarding than the average. If you have read Kwaidan, this is a pilgrimage; if you have not, the museum makes a good case that you should. Both are on the samurai street a short walk from the boat's northern landing.

East along the coast: a fishing port whose main street is lined with 177 bronze goblins, a preserved white-walled warehouse district, and Japan's only real sand dunes — 16km of them, dropping straight into the sea.

• 09:00

  2 hours
  

  Mizuki Shigeru Road — Yokai Spirit Street of GeGeGe no Kitaro

  Tottori

  An 800-metre street in a fishing town with 177 bronze yokai statues along it, honouring the manga artist who made Japan's folk monsters famous.

  Insider note

  Sakaiminato is Mizuki Shigeru's home town, and the street is the reason anyone comes here — but the detail that makes it work is that the statues are small, bronze, and unlabelled in English, so walking it becomes a hunt. Get the stamp rally sheet from the tourist office (¥120) if you want structure. The museum at the far end (¥1,000) is good on Mizuki's biography, which includes losing an arm at Rabaul and returning to draw for another seventy years. The station itself, the trains, and most of the shopfronts are yokai-themed. Two hours is right; the crowd is domestic and thin on weekday mornings.

• 12:30

  1.5 hours
  

  Kurayoshi White-Walled Warehouses — Edo-Era Merchant District

  Tottori

  A preserved district of white-plastered, black-tiled Edo merchant warehouses along a stone-lined canal, with almost no other visitors.

  Insider note

  The Utsubuki-Tamagawa district is about 400 metres of canal with willow trees, red-tiled roofs and koi in the water, and it is regularly empty on a weekday. Several warehouses now hold cafés, a soy sauce maker and a shop selling Kurayoshi's hakota dolls. This stop exists because it breaks the journey at exactly the right point and because it is the sort of place first-time itineraries have no room for. Free.

• 15:30

  2 hours
  

  Tottori Sand Dunes — Japan's Only Desert-Like Landscape

  Tottori

  Sixteen kilometres of coastal dunes up to 50 metres high, formed over 100,000 years by sand carried down from the mountains and thrown back by the sea.

  Insider note

  Climb the Uma-no-Se ridge — it is a steep 45-metre slog in soft sand and it takes fifteen minutes, and the view from the top of the Japan Sea beyond the dune crest is the only version of this place worth having. Go late afternoon: the low sun renders the wind ripples in relief, and the heat of a summer midday on open sand is genuinely dangerous. Camel rides and sandboarding are available and are exactly as touristy as they sound. Free to enter, ¥500 parking, and paragliding or sandboarding sessions are ¥3,500–6,000 if you want them.

• 17:30

  1 hour
  

  Tottori Sand Museum — Ephemeral Art of Colossal Sand Sculptures

  Tottori

  The only indoor sand sculpture museum in the world — monumental carvings by international artists, on a new theme each year, destroyed at the end of the season.

  Insider note

  Right beside the dunes and easy to dismiss until you are inside: the sculptures are five metres tall, carved by invited artists from a dozen countries, and made of nothing but sand and water. Each year's exhibition is demolished and the sand reused. ¥800. Check the season — the museum closes for roughly three months in winter and early spring while the next exhibition is built, and that closure catches people out.

South across the spine of Honshu — from the Japan Sea to the Inland Sea in one morning. A mountaintop castle in cloud on the way, and an evening in a canal district that looks the way the whole country is supposed to and almost nowhere does.

• 11:00

  2.5 hours
  

  Bitchu Matsuyama Castle — Japan's Highest Mountain Castle

  Okayama

  The highest castle in Japan at 430 metres, and the only original mountaintop keep still standing — on clear autumn mornings it appears to float on a sea of cloud.

  Insider note

  One of the twelve originals, and the hardest to reach: a shuttle bus from Bitchu-Takahashi station to the eighth station, then a 20-minute uphill walk on stone paths. ¥500. The famous cloud-sea photographs are taken not from the castle but from the Unkai Observatory across the valley, at dawn, between late September and early April, and only after a cold clear night following a warm day — that is a separate 4:30am expedition by taxi and it fails more often than it works. In daylight the castle is simply a small, original, mountaintop fortress with a resident cat that has its own social media following, and that is enough. Allow for the fact that the shuttle runs on a limited schedule.

• 16:00

  2 hours
  

  Kurashiki Bikan Historical Quarter — Edo-Era Canal District

  Okayama

  A canal lined with white-walled Edo rice warehouses, willows and stone bridges — a merchant district preserved almost entirely intact.

  Insider note

  Kurashiki was a shogunate-controlled rice port and the warehouses are the originals, now holding cafés, craft shops and a denim quarter. The right way to see it is late afternoon into evening: the day-trip coaches from Okayama leave around 16:30, the buildings are lit from about sunset, and the canal at night with almost nobody on it is the whole reason to sleep here rather than in Okayama. The punt rides (¥500, 20 min) stop around 17:00 and are pleasant rather than essential. Free to walk.

• 14:00

  1.5 hours
  

  Ohara Museum of Art — Japan's First Western Art Collection

  Okayama

  Japan's first museum of Western art, opened in 1930 by a textile magnate — El Greco, Monet, Gauguin, Matisse, in a neoclassical building on a canal in a small town.

  Insider note

  The founder sent a painter friend to Europe in the 1920s with instructions to buy, and the El Greco Annunciation he came back with is still the centrepiece. That such a collection sits in a town of 480,000 in western Japan is the point of the place. ¥2,000. Closed Mondays — if your Day 5 is a Monday, swap this and the castle around and do the museum tomorrow morning before leaving. The Craft Art Gallery in the same complex, showing mingei folk pottery, is included and is the part people skip and shouldn't.

A ferry to a former industrial island now given over entirely to contemporary art: a museum built underground so it does not interrupt the skyline, houses converted into installations, and a spotted pumpkin on a pier.

• 10:00

  6 hours
  

  Naoshima Contemporary Art Island

  Kagawa

  An Inland Sea island rebuilt around Tadao Ando's concrete museums and site-specific installations — the most concentrated contemporary art anywhere in Japan.

  Insider note

  Book the Chichu Art Museum online before you travel; it uses timed entry and sells out, and it is the one unmissable building — buried in a hillside, lit only by daylight, holding five Monet water lilies in a room floored with two million marble cubes. The Benesse House museum and the Art House Projects in Honmura village (a ¥1,050 multi-site ticket) are the rest of the day. Yayoi Kusama's yellow pumpkin sits on a pier and is free. Critically: most museums close on Mondays, and the island's rhythm is set by ferries and a small bus — rent a bicycle (¥1,000–1,500, electric strongly advised, the island is hilly) rather than waiting for buses. Do not attempt Naoshima and Teshima in one day.

A garden that took a century to build, a shrine at the top of a long staircase that people have been climbing for a thousand years, and the noodles this prefecture organises its entire identity around.

• 08:00

  2 hours
  

  Ritsurin Garden

  Kagawa

  Six ponds and thirteen landscaped hills built over a century by the local lords, with Mt. Shiun behind as borrowed scenery — and open from sunrise.

  Insider note

  Opens at 07:00 in summer, and the first hour is the reason to come — the garden is 75 hectares and effectively empty before 09:00. ¥410. Not designated one of the Three Great Gardens, which is an old ranking most Japanese garden specialists think it should displace. Take the south garden circuit rather than the north; it is the older and better composed half. The Kikugetsu-tei teahouse serves matcha (¥700) on tatami looking straight down the main pond, and at 08:00 you will have it to yourself.

• 11:00

  3 hours
  

  Kotohira-gu Shrine (Konpira-san)

  Kagawa

  A shrine to the god of seafarers at the top of 785 stone steps — 1,368 if you continue to the inner shrine. A pilgrimage site for a thousand years.

  Insider note

  785 steps to the main shrine takes 40–60 minutes at a normal pace, and the approach is lined with shops selling walking sticks (borrowed free) and sweets. Do the extra 583 to the inner shrine only if the day is clear — the view over the Sanuki plain from the main shrine is already the payoff, and the upper stretch is steeper and emptier. Palanquin carriers used to haul visitors up for a fee; the service ended in 2020 and is not coming back. Free. The shrine's treasure hall and the Omote Shoin with its Maruyama Okyo screens (¥800) are worth the stop on the way down.

• 14:30

  1.5 hours
  

  Sanuki Udon Master Class Experience

  Kagawa

  Kagawa eats more udon per head than anywhere in Japan, and the local shops let you make it — kneading the dough with your feet, as it is properly done.

  Insider note

  The foot-kneading is genuine technique rather than novelty: the dough is too stiff to work by hand and the gluten needs the pressure. Classes are ¥1,800–3,000, about 90 minutes, and end with you eating what you made. Book ahead — most take a handful of people per session. Separately, know the local rule: the best udon shops (the self-service seimenjo) open at 07:00 and are sold out and shut by 13:00 or 14:00, which is why this is an afternoon class and not an afternoon meal. Kagawa's udon culture runs on a breakfast clock.

• 18:30

  1.5 hours
  

  Kagawa Bone-in Chicken (Honetsuki-dori)

  Kagawa

  A whole chicken leg roasted hard with garlic and pepper — Kagawa's other dish, and the one locals eat in the evening when the udon shops have closed.

  Insider note

  Two versions and you must choose: oyadori (parent bird) is tough, dark and intensely flavoured; wakadori (young bird) is tender and much easier. Order oyadori if you want the real thing and are prepared to work at it. It comes with cabbage to mop the fat and a small bowl of rice, and it is a beer dish. ¥1,200–1,800 a leg. The Marugame and Takamatsu shops around Kawaramachi are open until 22:00, which makes this the reliable late dinner in a prefecture that eats early.

Into the deepest gorge in Shikoku, where defeated warriors hid in the twelfth century and built bridges out of vines so they could cut them behind themselves. A marble canyon, a bath reached by cable car, and a village of dolls.

• 10:30

  1.5 hours
  

  Oboke and Koboke Gorges — Marble Rock Canyons

  Tokushima

  A gorge of folded crystalline schist above the Yoshino river, seen from a flat-bottomed sightseeing boat that runs through the rapids and back.

  Insider note

  The 30-minute boat (¥1,500) runs from the Oboke roadside station and is the best introduction to the geology — the rock is metamorphic schist, folded and polished by the river, and it looks like marble because it very nearly is. The names mean roughly 'dangerous to walk on the big steps' and 'the small ones' — this gorge was the barrier that kept the Iya Valley isolated for eight centuries. Boats run year-round but suspend after heavy rain. There is also whitewater rafting here in summer, ¥6,000–12,000, and it is genuinely good water.

• 12:30

  1.5 hours
  

  Iya Valley Vine Bridges — Gorge-Spanning Suspension

  Tokushima

  A 45-metre bridge of woven mountain vine over a gorge, with gaps between the slats wide enough to see the river 14 metres below.

  Insider note

  ¥550, one-way only, and the gaps are the point — the slats are spaced so you must place each foot deliberately, and the bridge moves. It is rebuilt every three years from fresh vine, with steel cables hidden inside since the 1950s, which is reassuring and does not make it feel any less alarming. Go before 11:00 or after 15:00; the coach tours from Tokushima arrive midday and the bridge takes one person at a time. Do not carry anything loose — phones dropped through the slats are a regular event and they are not recoverable.

• 14:30

  1 hour
  

  Iya Valley Scarecrow Village — Life-Size Doll Population

  Tokushima

  A depopulated hamlet where one resident has made 350 life-size cloth dolls of the people who used to live there, and placed them where those people were.

  Insider note

  There are fewer than 30 living residents and roughly ten times that many dolls — waiting at bus stops, working the fields, sitting in the closed school. Ayano Tsukimi began making them in 2003 when she returned to find the village emptied, and she is often there and happy to talk. It is not a tourist attraction so much as one person's response to rural depopulation, and it is affecting rather than kitsch. Free. A further 45 minutes up the valley from the vine bridge on a narrow road, and this is the point at which not having a car ends the day.

• 17:00

  1.5 hours
  

  Iya Onsen Cliff Bath — Riverside Rotenburo via Cable Car

  Tokushima

  A hot spring at the bottom of the gorge, reached by a private cable car that descends 170 metres from the hotel above it to the riverbank.

  Insider note

  The cable car is the point: a five-minute descent through the trees to an open-air bath directly on the river, with the water arriving at 39°C — cooler than most onsen and therefore one you can sit in for an hour. Day use is ¥1,900 including the cable car, roughly 10:00–16:00 (confirm, it shortens in winter), and staying at the hotel above lets you use it into the evening. Mixed and single-sex sections vary by time of day. If you are staying in the valley, this is the evening.

South out of the mountains to the Pacific coast. One of the twelve original castles — and the only one with its palace still standing — a food hall where the city drinks all afternoon, and bonito seared over burning straw in front of you.

• 10:00

  1.5 hours
  

  Kochi Castle — Original Tenshu & Honmaru Intact

  Kochi

  The only castle in Japan where both the original keep and the original palace inside the main enclosure survive together.

  Insider note

  Twelve castles kept their keeps; only this one also kept the honmaru palace beside it, which means you walk from the lord's residence straight into the fortress the way its occupants did. Everything you touch is 1749 or earlier. ¥420. The stairs are steep and you climb in socks. Look for the ishi-otoshi — the stone-dropping hatches over the wall base — and the fact that the palace's ceiling height changes between rooms according to who was allowed in them.

• 08:00

  1.5 hours
  

  Nichiyoichi Sunday Market — 300 Years of Commerce

  Kochi

  A kilometre of stalls down the street leading to the castle, held every Sunday since 1690 — produce, knives, plants, and 400 vendors.

  Insider note

  Sundays only, roughly 05:00–15:00, and if your Day 9 is not a Sunday this simply does not happen — check before you fix the trip's start date, because it is worth arranging the whole itinerary around. This is not a tourist market: it is where Kochi buys vegetables, and the vendors are farmers who have held the same pitch for generations. Come at 08:00. Eat imo-tempura (sweet potato fritters) and drink the cloudy citrus juice sold by the cup.

• 12:00

  1 hour
  

  Katsuo no Tataki — Straw-Flame Seared Bonito

  Kochi

  Bonito seared for seconds in a metre-high flame of burning rice straw, sliced thick, and eaten with salt rather than soy.

  Insider note

  Ask for shio-tataki — with salt — not the soy-and-ponzu version. Kochi people are emphatic about this and they are right: the straw smoke and the fat need salt, and ponzu covers both. Several restaurants sear it at your table or in front of the counter and the flame is genuinely two metres. Season matters: spring bonito (hatsu-gatsuo) is lean and clean, autumn (modori-gatsuo) is fatty and better. ¥1,500–3,000 for a proper plate.

• 13:30

  2 hours
  

  Hirome Market — Drinking Hall of the People

  Kochi

  A covered hall of sixty small food and drink stalls around shared tables, where the city drinks from lunchtime onward.

  Insider note

  The system: buy from any stall, sit anywhere, share the table with strangers, and expect to be talked to. Kochi has the highest alcohol consumption per head in Japan and does not treat afternoon drinking as remarkable. Get tataki from the Yasube stand, a bottle of local sake, and stay longer than you planned. Busiest and best on Sunday afternoons. ¥2,000–3,500 will do it comfortably.

• 16:30

  1.5 hours
  

  Katsurahama Beach — Crescent Bay & Ryoma Statue

  Kochi

  A crescent of coloured pebbles between two headlands, with a 13-metre statue of Sakamoto Ryoma facing the Pacific from the cliff above.

  Insider note

  Swimming is banned — the undertow here is lethal and the signs mean it. What you come for is the composition: pine-topped rocks, the shrine on the point, and Ryoma, the low-ranking samurai from this city who brokered the alliance that ended the shogunate and was assassinated at 33. During special periods a scaffold is erected beside the statue so you can stand at his eye level, which is a strange and effective thing. Free; ¥730 for the Ryoma museum on the headland, which is excellent and has full English.

West across Shikoku to finish: a preserved wax-merchant town on the way, a castle with an original keep on a hill in the middle of the city, and a 3,000-year-old hot spring in a wooden bathhouse that inspired the bathhouse in Spirited Away.

• 10:00

  1.5 hours
  

  Uchiko Town — Wax Merchant Preservation District

  Ehime

  A preserved street of ochre-plastered merchant houses built on Japan's wax trade, plus a 1916 kabuki theatre still in use.

  Insider note

  Uchiko made vegetable wax for candles and got rich on it in the late 19th century, then the electric light arrived and the town stopped — which is why the street survives. The Kami-Haga residence (¥500) includes the wax workshop and explains the process properly. The Uchiko-za theatre (¥400) is the better stop: a working wooden kabuki house with a revolving stage turned by hand from beneath, and you can go under the stage and see the mechanism. Directly on the Matsuyama line, so it costs 90 minutes and one train stop.

• 13:00

  2 hours
  

  Matsuyama Castle — Hilltop Fortress with Original Keep

  Ehime

  An original keep on a 132-metre hill in the middle of the city, reached by ropeway, chairlift, or a twenty-minute climb.

  Insider note

  Another of the twelve originals, and the most complete defensive layout of any of them — the approach doubles back on itself through four gates, all of them covered by fire from above, and you walk the whole trap on the way in. ¥520 for the keep, ¥520 return for the ropeway. Take the chairlift rather than the ropeway cabin: same price, open air, and a far better view of the walls. The keep's top floor looks over the whole Dogo plain to the Inland Sea.

• 16:00

  2 hours
  

  Dogo Onsen Honkan — Japan's Oldest Hot Spring Bathhouse

  Ehime

  A hot spring in continuous use for over a thousand years, in an 1894 wooden bathhouse of stairs, corridors and a drum tower — and the model for the bathhouse in Spirited Away.

  Insider note

  The Honkan building has multiple ticket tiers (¥460 for the basic bath up to ¥1,690 for the private tatami room with tea and a yukata) and the upper tiers are the reason to come — you bathe, then sit upstairs in a yukata drinking tea in a wooden room, which is the actual Dogo experience rather than just a wash. The building has been under staged restoration for years and parts may be screened; check what is open. The Emperor's private bath, the Yushinden, is a separate ¥300 tour and is the finest room in the building. Arrive by 16:00 — it fills in the evening and the private rooms are first-come. Tattoos are generally accepted here, which is unusual for a bathhouse of this stature.

• 18:15

  30 minutes
  

  Botchan Ressha — Vintage Steam Locomotive Replica

  Ehime

  A diesel replica of the 1888 steam train Natsume Soseki wrote about, running on the modern tram tracks between Dogo and the city centre.

  Insider note

  ¥800, a few services a day, and it takes twenty minutes to do what the normal ¥200 tram does — which is the entire point. At the terminus the crew turn the locomotive by hand on a turntable and lift the carriage couplings themselves, in front of everyone, and it is the best free show in Matsuyama. Soseki taught at the middle school here in 1895 and the novel he wrote about it is the reason half the things in this city are called Botchan. Check the timetable — it does not run on some weekdays.