Category: japan

Ehime + Onomichi – Oct 2025_3

Onomichi・尾道

We got a boat to Onomichi and then got another boat to Mukaishima to have pizza and then got another boat back.

I thought it would be a good idea to book a hotel at the top of the hill, which you can see below. The views were good, the walk up and down wasn’t that great, especially in the heat and humidity.

Temple Walk which turned into Cat Alley.

Breakfast at the hotel. They had gone to a lot of trouble to make me a completely vegan breakfast. No dashi even! Unfortunately, the miso also had an astronomical ...

Ehime + Onomichi – Oct 2025_2

Imabari・今治

I don’t want to be awful but unless you love towels (and even then I’d hesitate to recommend it), I wouldn’t go to Imabari (sorry!). We went because, and I have no idea why I thought we would be able to do it, I decided it would be good to do the Shimanami Kaido. I booked us bikes and everything. We didn’t end up doing it, we got the bus instead.

Ikuchi Island・生口島

We stayed a night on this island. It was supposed to be a good midway point to stop and rest. Anyway, they have my favourite ice ...

Ehime + Onomichi – Oct 2025_1

Ozu・大洲

I lived in Ozu in Ehime Prefecture for two years as an ALT from 2012-2014. When I lived there, not much was going on. I used to be in bed at about 8:30pm most nights because there wasn’t really anything else to do. I cycled everywhere, did running as a hobby and had school lunch every day – I was very healthy! I was constantly on cockroach alert and I also had a very real fear of waking up with some kind of centipede walking on me. This happened to two people that I know, so it wasn’t an ...

Matsumoto + Lake Suwa – Feb ’24: part three

It doesn’t really warrant a part three, but the last post was picture heavy, so I’ve split it.

Before breakfast I went down to the onsen and it was just me!

Breakfast was amazing. The lady was talking to me, asking about what I eat/don’t eat and said that it was helpful eating katsuo dashi. So, if you can be flexible in Japan, they can usually offer you something inline with what you can eat – it’s a different debate about whether you should have to be flexible but I will be, so it was good enough for me.

We ...

Matsumoto + Lake Suwa – Feb ’24: part two

Lake Suwa doesn’t sound great in English (especially if you’re used to the water in England at the moment), better to go with the Japanese name, Suwa-ko.

We arrived fairly early and it was cold! No odd socks today, I had thermal leggings on. We took the local train from Matsumoto (half the price and only about 15 minutes longer – who’s winning?) and got off at Shimo-Suwa Station. We practically ran to get coffee and a piece of banana bread – really nice because it wasn’t overly sweet.

I don’t know when I started liking shrines so much and ...