Day 36: Zero (Matsuyama)
I was having such a lovely day off that I almost forgot to write stuff down tonight, dang it! So here goes: I woke up, went down to breakfast, and they… punched my ticket. Literally.
That’s right, breakfast tickets in classic, retro, old-school Japanese train style. When I checked in yesterday at the self-service terminal, the staff grew visibly excited that tonight’s guest in the Iyotetsu Room was checking in - two of them came over with a signboard (like you’d hold up at a train station) with my name on it. When the machine spit out two printed breakfast vouchers, they took them and gave me these tickets instead, printed on thick cardboard just like back in the old days. And when I went to breakfast, they literally punched it, just like you would a train ticket.
So: What’s the Iyotetsu Room? Well, it’s a hotel room that’s littered with train-specific stuff. Instead of roll-down blinds, there are wooden Venetian blinds. There’s a model train along one wall; above it are passenger straps (i.e., the kind you grab on to when riding a train). There’s what looks like an original bench from a train car, there’s a small glass cabinet with a bunch of train nerd stuff… and best (weirdest?) of all, there’s part of a streetcar in here as well. But wait! After getting my breakfast tickets, I was asked what size I wear - they provided me with a hat, gloves, a uniform, an overcoat, and some sort of handbag I assume conductors would carry back in the day. It was a little bit tricky getting it all up to my room, but hey: how cool is that?
So yeah. I pretended to drive a streetcar this afternoon. But first, back to breakfast! That was the most elaborate breakfast buffet I think I’ve seen since a Westin in Bangkok (still the #1 record holder) or maybe Switzerland. I absolutely loved something I think was called “scattered sushi rice”- a huge vat of cooked rice, warm, with all kinds of seafood and things sprinkled throughout it. But the ultimate thing was a pour-it-yourself flight of citrus juices (after all, this is citrus country). I mean, how could you not indulge?
I stayed longer than I should have. I ate more than I should have. Can you blame me, though? And then I headed out to perform errands, more or less: I wanted a new bag for my hiking poles (the old one I’d been using has fallen apart), a T-shirt for Dan, a new pair of socks, and that’s about it. Montbell Matsuyama wasn’t close, but it wasn’t too far a walk; the shops was enormous, had everything I needed, but had sold out of the limited edition Montbell 50 Years shirts, so Dan got a different one, alas. I’ve also been kinda sorta trying to see if every Montbell store on the island has a different, only-available-in-this-shop T-shirt, and yes, so far that’s true, essentially. Specifically, the one in Nakamura had a lovely shirt with a drawing of a bridge of the Shimanto river; unfortunately, though, the Matsuyama shirt was of Mt Ishizuchi, but with a caption in Cartoon Sans. Yeeesh. That didn’t look good, so I didn’t buy a T-shirt for myself. This was also my first encounter with tax-free shopping; that almost succeeded, but my physical passport was in my hotel room, so nope, didn’t happen - but I do know which Montbell in Osaka does that now. Plus, although I still can’t fit in Japanese XL shorts, I am closer than I was two weeks ago for sure. With any luck, I’ll be able to do so in four weeks when I get to Osaka.
OK, so back to the hotel room to drop off my stuff - and then time to find the post office to buy a box to fill with things to send home. That wasn’t easy to find, but I did happen to walk by a place called Captain Santa Club on the way; I couldn’t resist going inside, and whoa, weird stuff! I did buy something; more importantly, I did eventually find the post office, buy a small box, and then head back to my room to fill it with stuff. Back to the Japan Post website, generate the paperwork, get the PDF, go downstairs to Family Mart to print it, then back to the post office to send the package. Now, this time was a little bit trickier as the “post office” was a counter inside of the fancy Takashimaya department store next door to the train station, so it didn’t look like they’d seen an “International ePacket Light” before, but no problem: they figured it out (and asked me why I was sending a cup of sake - whoops, note to self, call that something different in English, like ‘small cup’ because “one cup” is a brand of rotgut Japanese sake) and it should be on its way to California in a week or so.
So, that taken care of, then what? Well, I suppose visit the castle, right? I can see it from my hotel room; it’s perched way up on a tall hill in the middle of the city. There was a museum on the way - and two American tourists holding hands and kissing each other while walking, eww - that had a beautiful painting of a cliff face that I loved, but there were no pictures allowed and they didn’t sell postcards, dang it. And I walked up the hill to the castle; uphill is getting easier and easier, thankfully. So yeah, castle was rad:
And because I’m an idiot sometimes, I took the chairlift down from the castle without looking at it first. Yikes. They’re tiny chairs with zero safety features available other than “please hold on for dear life” - no seat bars, no seatbelts, no nothing. I didn’t especially enjoy the trip down, given that my butt is significantly chonkier than the average Japanese butt and that I don’t love heights. Oh well! It was fun walking back to the hotel from there; it was obvious that that’s the one huge tourist attraction as I saw dozens of Westerners for the first time in a month there. Plenty of cute shops and restaurants, all of that; eventually, I wound up walking back through the city’s covered shopping streets, much like Nakamura and Uwajima, but the ones here were an order of magnitude more vibrant, still very much viable concerns. Decided I should probably eat some lunch, I wound up at McDonald’s for a Grimace Shake, because why the hell not? Spoiler alert: it was delicious. And then hey, hotel room, time to dress up and play train conductor for a little bit.
Afterwards, well, time for dinner - and I’m a total pushover sometimes, so I did go back to Captain Santa and buy another T-shirt as it sounds like they’re hard to find (there’s only one store in Japan, in Tokyo, but the one here is just a pop-up in a department store for a short time). So yeah, my pack is heavier already. Go me! But dang, it’s a cute T-shirt.
I thought I’d look in the basement of Takashimaya to see if they had any take-away food on offer and the answer was yes; I got there right as staff were putting 20% or 50% off stickers on all of the sushi, so yeah, I finally got some sushi for supper. First time on this trip! Good stuff; the Wolf Blass chard from Family Mart was not, though, blecch. Afterwards, a quick trip down to the lobby for some free soft-serve citrus ice cream, and now I’m all set for the night. My pack is packed, I’ve got everything ready to go, and I’ll be out of here by 08h00 tomorrow to catch the train to the bus to the mountains where I’ll start the day at T44.
Random notes: Somehow, my VAT refund was just approved! It’s worth about five bucks - this seems to be a new trend, weird iOS apps that work with proprietary platforms at random stores that do get you some tax refunded, but at the expense of a lot of annoyances. Still: five bucks! I’ll take it.
I walked past a Dormy Inn today - I’ve never stayed in one, but I gather they’re known for high quality hot springs. They had a free footbath out front, so I stopped for a bit and soaked my feet. Weird.
I’ve fallen just a little tiny bit in love with Mican, the mascot for Ehime prefecture. So cute!!
My left thumb/hand is hurting like a son of a bitch; ibuprofen isn’t doing too much & the brace I bought at a chemist’s is Japanese-size (read: entirely too small; it just makes the pain worse). That’ll be interesting seeing where that goes over the next 25 days until I get home!
Matsuyama is without a doubt the first city I’ve visited on the island of Shikoku that feels lively, prosperous, and, well, like it’s important. Tokushima felt like a backwater - that run-down “entertainment district” with the abandoned soapland sign felt emblematic of the place to me. Kochi was a giant zero to me; it looked better than Tokushima, but had all the character of an airport Sbarro. The truly remote towns like Nakamura and Uwajima all felt like they’d seen better days - but Matsuyama feels like it’s doing fine, thanks. You can pay for stuff with a Suica or other IC card, there are people about doing things - it’s lovely. I’m curious to see how Takamatsu feels by comparison.
Finally, one last bonus pic - thank you for reading this far!
