We’ve spent most of our time in Japan on the main island of Honshu, but we briefly zigzagged by train down to the island of Shikoku. This is the smallest and least populated of Japan’s four main islands. It was raining when we arrived in Matsuyama, but luckily our hotel is connected directly to a long shopping street covered by an arcade roof.
People here seem friendly, outgoing, and curious. We went to dinner at an izakaya staffed by four girls in their early 20s maybe. All of them were interested to practice their English skills and curious about where we’d visited in Japan and what brought us to Matsuyama. One of the young chefs was also a skilled artist and drew some adorable welcome signs for the dishes we ordered.
On Friday we took the chairlift (and I mean a literal chair lift - each rider in their own single chair) to the main attraction—Matsuyama Castle. This castle sits high above the city on a cliff of Mount Katsuyama.
I know it seems like every historic structure we visit is a reconstruction because the original burned down or was bombed in the war. But Matsuyama Castle is considered one of Japan’s twelve surviving original castles (genzon tenshu).
For a castle to be considered “original” it must have been built before the Edo period ended in 1868. The main keep her at Matsuyama was built in 1854 which means it just slid in under the wire as an original Edo-era castle. (The *real* original castle keep was constructed in 1603 but — surprise, surprise—was destroyed by lightning in 1784).
Matsuyama Castle is unique among the remaining original castles because it still has many of its original wings and towers. These spaces have an original feel to them and also hold some educational exhibits about the castle construction, weaponry, and even haiku poetry. The views from the upper floors looked out over the entire city.
The construction of the walls is fascinating. The stones were meticulously shaped and fit together like puzzle pieces.
This type of stone wall construction is called kirikomi-hagi. Leaving no gaps between the stones makes it very difficult for an invading enemy to climb. Maybe Alex Honnold should give climbing Matsuyama Castle a try.
We didn’t have to scale the walls but we did get a bit of a workout going up and down all the stairs in the towers. Kevin got an ice cream cone reward. Not matcha-flavored this time around—the Ehime prefecture is known for its oranges so this one is orange flavored with a little marmalade topping.
After the castle, we took a bus to Ishite-ji temple.
This temple is one of the 88 temples of the Shikoku Shingon Buddhist pilgrimage. Earlier this year when we were on Kauai, we visited a garden that replicated the pilgrimage with mini-temples. Well, this one is temple number 51 on the pilgrimage route. The statue shows a typical pilgrim kitted out with a wide brim straw hat, walking stick and a pack.
This temple has an interesting tunnel that is filled with jizo statues and statues of the Buddha. It’s kind of a tight fit and very dimly lit. We were glad we didn’t meet a big tour group coming the other way.
There really weren’t a lot of Western tourists at the temple on the day we went, but when we came out of the tunnel we did happen upon a large group of about 20 or 30 pilgrims all dressed in white clothes. After we had walked on a little bit, we could hear them singing. I had to look it up, and discovered that there are some specific hymns (Goeika) that are associated with the Shingon pilgrimage. It was very interesting to see the pilgrims in real life after hearing about it back in January in Hawaii.
Did I mention that Matsuyama is known for growing oranges? When I saw this sign outside a shop near our hotel, I knew we had to investigate!
What a neat concept! Similar to wine tasting, this shop had almost 30 different varieties of orange juice on tap.
You could choose a tray holding 3, 5, or 10 sample shot glasses, depending on how much sugar you were willing to consume in a single sitting. Each spigot had a sign noting the orange variety used, and characteristics like sweetness, acidity and bitterness.
We each tried five samples and I was honestly shocked by how wildly different each one tasted! Plain old Minute Maid will no longer cut it for me now that I have tasted the nectar produced by ponkan mandarin oranges!
After coming down from our sugar high, we headed to the rooftop of a department store in town to ride the ferris wheel.
We had some nice views of the city and an excellent view of the castle on the bluff. It was a good way to end our time in this fun and interesting town.
We only had two full days in the Hiroshima area and the second day was expected to be rainy so we arrived at Hiroshima port by ferry then took a tram to our hotel, dropped our bags, and took another ferry to Miyajima island.
Miyajima island is famous for the “floating” red torii gate at Itsukushima shrine. We arrived at low tide, and the gate only “floats” at high tide, so we decided to explore the rest of the island a bit instead. We enjoyed walking through the busy Omotesando shopping street, and watched the local sika deer steal snacks away from unsuspecting people who had their backs turned.
After lunch we had just enough time to get partway up Mount Misen using the cable car and funicular.
Mount Misen is covered by a protected old-growth forest that is a mix of conifers (especially fir, red pine, and hemlock) and deciduous trees (beautiful maple trees). We could hear many birds through the open windows of the cable car cabin.
The mountain is only 1700 feet, but we didn’t give ourselves enough time to hike from the last funicular tram stop to the summit. So we just took in the views of the Seto Inland Sea from the lookouts at the tram station.
Miyajima island and the surrounding waters are part of the Setonaikai National Park. You can see some lines in the water below— that’s an oyster farm (If you like oysters, Miyajima is the right place — every shop seemed to be selling them, and Kevin had some fried oysters at lunch).
We got back down the mountain just in time for high tide. So we made a beeline for the beach at the Itsukushima Shinto shrine.
The gate is 50 feet tall and separates the secular world from the sacred island of Miyajima. Miyajima is the popular nickname for the island and it means “Shrine Island”. The actual name for the island is the same as the shrine: Itsukushima.
We didn’t have enough time to properly explore the Itsukushima shrine, and our photos don’t do it justice, so here is a rendering in Lego that will help give a sense of what it was like.
We then spent an evening and a rainy day exploring the city of Hiroshima. We were interested to check out the castle, so we walked from our hotel.
The walk was pleasant and it wasn’t raining yet, but we got all the way to the castle only to discover that it had been closed for a month! And will remain closed indefinitely. Google lists it as “open” (and technically yes—you can get into the complex) but the building itself will be reconstructed from scratch because the reconstruction that was done after the atomic bombing is all concrete and not earthquake proof.
Lucky for us, the rain still hadn’t started and the beautiful Shukkeien Garden was just a few blocks away.
This sunken garden was also destroyed by the Atomic bomb (except a few trees that survived the blast). But it was replanted exactly as it had been before. It was such a lovely green space and had an interesting variety of tiny islands, bridges, water features, and plants.
Just as we felt the first raindrops we ducked into the Hiroshima Prefecture Museum of Art. Its main collection is mostly modern art.
But they had a special exhibition of theatre posters and advertisements by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
His posters were paired alongside another Art Nouveau icon, the Czech artist Alphonse Mucha. I was glad we’d stopped at the museum because I really like the Art Nouveau style.
We spent the rest of the afternoon at the Peace Memorial Park and Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. It was a somber visit and the rain seemed kind of appropriate in context. (Note: some photos are from the previous two afternoons which were sunny.)
When the atomic bomb was dropped on August 6, 1945 it had an immediate devastating impact, destroying and flattening nearly everything within a mile of the hypocenter. The firestorm that followed consumed about five square miles of the rest of the city. Many people who were not killed in the initial blast did not survive the fires. The 160,000 victims were mostly civilians and the museum tells their stories in a very moving way. So many lives were lost, and even the survivors suffered horrifically as a result.
We didn’t take photos or videos inside the museum, instead using our time there to respectfully view the stories of the victims. We had also visited the National Peace Memorial Hall to pay our respects. In the park itself, there was a beautiful display of many senbazuru paper cranes. These were made in tribute to a little girl called Sadako Sasaki. She was just two years old on August 6th. She was 2 kilometers away from the hypocenter and initially seemed unhurt. But ten years later she was diagnosed with leukemia. During her time in the hospital she folded origami paper cranes hoping to fold a thousand of them to grant her wish to get well. Unfortunately she did not survive, but her heartbroken classmates finished folding the thousand cranes in her memory. Now this part of the Peace Park is set aside for the millions of paper cranes sent annually by people from around the world.
Many adults and especially children who survived the bombing suffered similarly to Sadako, developing illnesses and succumbing to cancer as a direct result of the radiation. In 1958, funds were collected from students at 3100 schools in 9 different countries to build a monument to recognize the children who lost their lives because of the bomb. The Children’s Peace Monument is a symbol of hope for a world without war.
Our visit to Hiroshima really made us reflect on war and its terrible consequences. With the current situation in the world and in our country, I believe more strongly than ever that war does not solve any problems but only causes more suffering.
