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Two onsens and a castle
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Since I had such a great time in Beppu, I decided to visit another town known for its onsens. In this case, there was one famous onsen. Dogo Onsen is the oldest functioning onsen in Japan. It includes four separate bathing areas (two for men, two for women) and four different pricing schemes involving tea, yukata (robe) rental, privacy, and which bath you use. I went for the cheapest option (~$4) which only allowed access to the larger bathing area and changing room. It was much bigger than any of the onsens I had visited in Beppu. Most of the other women there were Japanese tourists. At all times of the day, but especially in the evening, there are groups of Japanese tourists walking through the streets either headed toward or coming from Dogo Onsen wearing their hotel provided yukatas and wooden sandals.
The basic onsen etiquette as I described it in the Beppu entry also applies to the onsens in Matsuyama. After bathing, I went for a walk around the building. After looking at the teacups in the second floor exhibition room I started to walk into the back area. One of the staff members came over from the front and told me I needed to pay extra to go in there. As I started to walk away and apologize she told me I should take a quick peak at that it was the area of the imperial baths for the emperor. I'm pretty sure it was just the changing and tea area, since I didn't see any water or anything that looked like it could have ever held water. As I was leaving the area one of her coworkers came over and scolded her. Hopefully she didn't get into trouble for letting me go back there.
I spent the next day exploring Matsuyama with Meredith, a former Bostonian who's moving to Palo Alto in the fall for Business School (we're basically switching places so I made sure to pump her for tips on Boston). We first visited the castle which pretty, but nothing spectacular. The castle is located on a hill essentially in the middle of town. It makes for a good landmark to keep from getting lost. Rather than riding the rather lame looking rope-way to the top, we walked up, taking a slight detour into the woods. The last bit of cherry blossoms were still in bloom, though many of the petals had fallen off and green leaves had started to sprout.
After the castle, we went off in search of a shrine somewhere north of the castle. Unfortunately the only map we had involved cartoon pictures of the major sites and a few major road markings, but was not exactly to scale. After wandering through a few random neighborhoods (all nice and clean) and finding a random cemetery, we gave up and started walking toward a different shrine. In this case giving up was a great idea, because we randomly happened across the shrine we were initially looking for and were able to watch a baby blessing that was taking place during our visit.
My big discovery in Matsuyama is that department store basements are stocked with wonderful food halls offering free samples of all sorts of different foods, my favorite being the desserts. Meredith and I became sample whores, tasting all of the offering multiple times. I wish I had discovered this sooner as it's actually the standard all over Japan.
I ended my time in Matsuyama with a visit to one of the local onsens. This one sees few tourists, Japanese or otherwise, so is a much more typical look into modern Japanese onsen culture. I found it to be pretty much the same as the touristy ones, though the walls weren't decorated as much.
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