Matsuyama Fun

August 17th to August 28th, I enrolled in a two week Japanese language intensive course in Matsuyama City. My BOE allowed me to go there for "business trip" purposes, which mostly turned into two hours of class and the rest of the day was to myself. My main teacher was Kirino Sensei, who was a really good teacher. During the two weeks, I explored the city with my friend Heidi.



We went to "Dogo Eki" Dogo station and watched a huge clock that had a performance every half hour. Besides the clock was a foot bath area where one could soak their feet into nice hot water. While we sat, we saw this really beautiful butterfly. Heidi and I roamed the streets of Dogo area and discovered many cute little shops. One of them was a manju shop that made and packaged their own manju.




We also visited Dogo Onsen, which is known to be Japan's oldest onsen that is around 3000 years old. Although we did not get to experience the onsen, I will totally go back when it gets cooler. I found out that Dogo Onsen was used as a model onsen for the Ghibli movie "Spirited Away." It was so awesome getting to see such a historical site. After looking around the onsen area, we met up with Annie and had "mikan" orange sherbet cones. Mikans are Ehime's trademark and what the prefecture is known to be famous for. It was sure delicious!




After eating, we visited Matsuyama Castle. It was sure awesome because we had to take a one person seat chair lift to get to the entrance. The heat was killing us after we finished touring the castle, so we took a break and bought ice cream. I tried a new flavor, "kuri" chestnut soft serve ice cream, which was really good!






The night before the Language course ended, many JETs got together and had a trivia/ drinking party in one of Matsuyama's park, which was a lot of fun getting to know more JETs in the area. Over the two weeks I really got to know the area better, and become better aware of the different places within Ehime.