Unique Spots - Matsuyama | ArrivalGuides.com

Unique SpotsGuide was updated: August 20, 2024

Matsuyama has been home to artists, soldiers and thinkers who have achieved international influence. Their birthplaces and homes are now fascinating museums. Several of the temples on the Shikoku Pilgrimage are also found in Matsuyama, but you don't have to be a pilgrim to enjoy their calm beauty.

Hatsuyuki Sake Brewery

This brewery is housed in a building dating back several centuries. Located in Tobe, a centre for ceramics, the brewery has been renovated to welcome guests in the attractive second-floor café. You can be sure of a warm welcome if you drop in for a tasting of the wonderful sake produced here.

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Giyaman Glass Museum

The Giyaman Glass Museum in Dogo has an exquisite collection that includes glass tobacco pipes and smoking paraphernalia, a bird cage with tiny glass bars, insect cages for keeping chirping insects in summer, and pillows of blue glass. There are also more typical glass products such as glasses for sake, bowls, and plates.

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Dogo Sake & Beer Brewery

This sake and beer brewery is located in Dogo, not far from the Honkan. In the attractive brewery shop, you can taste a variety of sake and shochu, and browse a selection of beautiful ceramics and glass. The buildings of the brewery itself are interesting, and there are displays of brewing paraphernalia from past times.

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Itami Juzo Museum

Itami Juzo is known for his comic films including "Tampopo" and "A Taxing Woman". Itami spent his school years in Matsuyama, and this museum is a tribute to his work as an essayist, actor, artist and filmmaker. If you've ever seen one of his films, this fascinating museum will be one stop you won't want to miss.

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Matsuyama Central Park

Matsuyama Central Park is home to some impressive sports infrastructure including the Botchan Stadium, the Ehime Prefectural Budokan, and the Aqua Palette swimming complex. There's also a very interesting museum detailing Matsuyama's contribution to baseball, the No-Ball Museum.

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Ehime Prefecture Budokan

Ehime Prefectural Budokan is a massive public martial arts hall, featuring dramatic architecture of stone ramparts, soaring wooden pillars and grey tile. Feel free to wander inside and watch the citizens of Matsuyama practising kendo, judo, karate and other fighting disciplines.

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Kachizuru Sake Brewery

Kachizuru is located in Tobe, an area which is home to a thriving ceramic craft industry. The brewery itself is an attractive, traditional building, and the sake produced here is likely to appeal to foreign tastes. The brewery offers several varieties of aged sake at very reasonable prices, and you're welcome to ask for a tasting.

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Seki Art Gallery

The gallery features works by representative modern Japanese painters including Taikan Yokoyama, Kaii Higashiyama, Ryōhei Koiso, Ikuo Hirayama, and Seiki Kuroda. On the second floor in the Rodin Room, there’s a marble sculpture of a faun, and various lithographs by Rodin.

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Hamada Old Clinic

Mitsuhama is the old port of Matsuyama, and its streets are a fascinating mixture of new houses and buildings dating from Edo to the current period. The Hamada Clinic was built in the Taisho period in a thoroughly Western style, although the living quarters are Japanese. Allowed to lapse into disrepair until recently, the building is now being restored. One of the front rooms is used as a shop for some very attractive ceramics, children's clothes and accessories. The building has a rather haunted air about it, but there are no credible reports of supernatural activity.

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Ninomaru Garden

The Ninomaru Garden at Matsuyama Castle is the site of the feudal lord's residence. The residence is gone, but the floor plan of the building is preserved as a garden with water features. Couples take wedding photos at this romantic spot, and you can usually see a couple or two in their wedding finery. The garden has a different face each time of year, with flowers year-round, and fruit and red leaves in autumn.

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Unique Spots in Matsuyama

Hatsuyuki Sake Brewery

Giyaman Glass Museum

Dogo Sake & Beer Brewery

Itami Juzo Museum

Matsuyama Central Park

Ehime Prefecture Budokan

Kachizuru Sake Brewery

Seki Art Gallery

Hamada Old Clinic

Ninomaru Garden