Little did I know, this trip would be marked by a lack of sleep. I got in around 3 hours of sleep after managing to pass out just after 1 AM. I guess the nerves of missing my early morning flight, along with the excitement of travelling to a new city, made it difficult to fall asleep.
After getting up at 4 AM, I got ready to leave the hotel. My girlfriend helped me with some last minute packing before we said goodbye to one another. She stayed back for a few more days in Tokyo before heading back to Calgary, while I had a week left in Japan. This also was my first time travelling solo on Japanese transit. Fortunately, or so I thought, armed with Google maps, I headed with my luggage to the nearby entrance to the subway. I had about 10-15 minutes to spare before the subway made its way to my station. I wanted to contact my girlfriend telling her I made it, while also telling my friend which whom I would be meeting up soon, but I had no cellular data. I knew my esim was working the day before, but somehow, a VPN was installed onto my phone. For a split second, I was able to get a message from my friend asking which train car I would be on, but I wasn't able to respond back. Fortunately, I had a screenshot of the subway I needed to take. I boarded the train and made my way to Haneda airport.
After getting off at Haneda's subway station, I made my way up the escalator. With free wi-fi, I quickly connected and made messages I meant to make during my ride. Very soon, I met up my friend and we headed towards JAL's check in to drop off our luggage. We made it through security and had nearly an hour before our flight to Matsuyama, a city in Ehime (Shikoku). Ehime was the only prefecture that I wasn't able to visit back in 2015. Little did I know back then that I would make a trip 10 years later to say I've completed going to all the prefectures in Shikoku. We soon boarded the plane. At the entrance, they offered some hard candy. I took an apple candy and headed towards my seat. With free wi-fi available on the plane, I had some things to kept me company as we travelled, but we ended up just chatting throughout the flight. It took about 50 minutes to get to Matsuyama, for after we took off, it felt that we were getting prepared to land.
After arrival, we quickly gathered our luggage and headed straight to the nearest bus that would take us to the city. It wasn't a super long trip, but I enjoyed looking at this new city from the window. Once we arrived at the JR Matsuyama station, we went to purchase an All Shikoku pass, that would allow us to travel all throughout Shikoku (on JR lines) for the next 3 days. For about $100 CAD, it was well worth the price, especially if you plan on travelling to different prefectures. After that, it was off to find Matsuyama Eki-mae Eki. I was confused by the name, since Eki means station. I thought we were already at the station that we needed to be, in order to get to the city center. However, we soon realized (and how I forgotten) that "mae" means in front. We were looking for the Matsuyama station in front of the [Matsuyama JR] station. Once we found it, we waited for the tram to take us to the city center...
Or so we thought, but we picked the wrong one it seemed. It's hard to explain, but the tram station had 5 different lines, while some of the lines did not loop around the town while one of the lines did. After getting off at a terminal station, we had to cross the street to the other station, to catch the same train that was eventually going to where we wanted to go. As we finally made it to Okaido (relatively large shopping street), we got off and headed to our hotel to drop off our luggage. It was way too early to check in, so we headed off to the shopping street to look for a place to eat. We ended up in front of a ramen shop that specialized in tsukemen. If you never had tsukemen before, think ramen, but with the noodles separated from the broth. Noodles also tend to be cold, while the broth is typically a lot richer than regular ramen broth. What struck out to me, and I'm not being sexist, is that the entire restaurant was operated by women (or at least at that time it was all women). This is the first time I've seen a female ramen chef, in which I whole heartedly was glad to see. The tsukemen came out glistening, with the first initial bites being incredibly tasty. With the super rich broth, you could taste the pork as it coated the noodles. After finishing our meal, we headed back to the tram so that we can head back to the station.
But on second hand, we decided to walk from Okaido station back to Matsuyama station (JR - anytime I talk about Matsuyama station, it's the JR one). It wasn't too hot yet since it was still relatively early. We saw their prefectural government building (Matsuyama should be the capital of Ehime) and walked through a park (not sure what this area is called). Once we arrived at the station, we had some time to kill before catching the train to our destination. After strolling around their souvenir store, grabbing a mikan flavored (Ehime is known for their oranges) Match drink, we stopped at their resting room. When the train nearly arrived, we headed to the platform to wait.
The ride to Ozu wasn't terribly long. I saw online that people called Ozu a little Kyoto. As we arrived at the station, it was sweltering hot. The humidity and clear skies did not help at all. Not wanting to increase our chances of skin cancer, we lathered up on sunscreen before heading off to Ozu castle. The streets were quiet, and there weren't too many people out and about. That is one nice thing about small cities and towns. As we approach the castle, drenched with sweat to the point that it started beading on my arms, we noticed that it was notably quiet. We paid the entrance fee and took the time to explore. Like in 2019 when we visited Nagoya Castle, it was nice to take our time to see the different parts and not worrying about moving along. The stairs though, seemed awfully steeper than what I remembered from other castles. It almost felt like I was climbing a ladder instead of going up stairs. They were so steep that I had to climb down backwards, for fear of slipping down. After visiting the castle, we tried locating Ozu's Old Town, a preserved street of old architecture. Perhaps it was due to Obon, but the entire street was shut down. Not seeing much, and being dejected, we had plans to go back to the station. However, there was still a lot of time left before the train would come, so we took some time to cool off at various convenience stores along the way.
I purchased a new pair of runners (Asics Nimbus 26 that were on sale) before Japan, which really helped keep my feet comfortable as we walked back to the station. As a side note, I often had sore heels/feet (or back pain back in 2023) from walking. As we made it back to the station, I took the opportunity to capture some railway photos (which is a strange passion of mine) before boarding the train back to Matsuyama station. After heading back to Matsuyama, and taking the tram to Okaido, we stopped by a nearby food hall in a department store to stock up for dinner. With our purchases in hand, we went back to the hotel to check in and settle down for the night. Dinner included sushi and sashimi. It was also the first time I had a monaka (or so I think...) which is a ice cream dessert surrounded by wafers and had a chocolate center. Quite tasty and relatively cheap!
With the lack of sleep catching up to me, I managed to pass out the moment I laid down in my bed.
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