Matsuyama scenes

Last Sunday I spent a few hours walking around Matsuyama, just to get a feel for the place. It was raining steadily but lightly the whole time. Fortunately, the guesthouse where I'm staying lent me an umbrella.

One thing that has really struck me on this, my third trip to Japan, is how much my impressions have changed after living for several months in Korea a few years ago. So much that is trivial is similar in both places: the look and feel of the sidewalks, the architecture of intersecting power lines atop poles on the street, the methods for parking cars in tight spaces. I'm sure most of the similarity is due to one-way influence, which of course was most intense in the first half of the 20th century when Korea was effectively a Japanese colony.

(It's possible that the similarities I'm noting are more pronounced here, in provincial Matsuyama, then they would be in a big city like Tokyo.)

Here are a few images (and one video) from my explorations.

Downtown.  This seems to be the widest street in town, what with the trolley tracks in the middle.

This huge Baskin-Robbins is in a modern structure wrapped around an old church.

There's a large indoor mall, very welcome during the current rainy season.

This seems to be the main tourist street in town.  There are many quaint looking shops selling cultural artifacts, interspersed with restaurants and tea shops.  There are wind chimes hanging from all the awnings, and they make a lovely sound if a breeze blows as you walk along the sidewalk.

I'm really intrigued by this statue.  Presumably an important historical figure.

I really like the style of the sculpting.

Apparently the statue was erected just in April of this year as a gift from the Matsuyama Central Lions Club.  It's the 45th anniversary for "CN."  What's that?

There's a really nice park, with broad pathways and kids' playgrounds, that runs along both sides of the Ishitekawa 石手川, the main river, for several blocks.

I really like the manhole covers -- very colorful.

I stumbled on this shrine as I was walking back from the river.  It's called Ide Jinja 井手神社 "Well Hand Shrine".

There's a local trolley that runs through town.  This is one of the newer cars; they are also still operating older cars with wooden floors.  This is my favorite station because there are cute little gates that came down and lights and bells that go off whenever a trolley car goes by.