Last week we had our first road trip in Japan. Just me, Sammy and a hired Yaris called Regina —yes, they were Rodger’s cousin, if you know, you know— against the whole Island of Shikoku. We flew into Matsuyama in Ehime prefecture, which is where we collected Regina from. In the city, we started by going up to the castle. Upon arrival at the bottom of the mountain, we were asked to pay for a cable car or chair lift. We made two very incorrect assumptions here:
1) that the chair lift/ cable car would take us right to the top
2) that the chair lift would be like the ones you get when you’re skiing, with the safety bars that come down.
In reality, the chair lift was individual chairs, without any kind of bar or seat belt. By the time we realised this, it was too late. We were at the front of the queue. Sammy went first and then I followed in the seat behind. It wasn’t too fast or anything, in fact the view with all the trees and the cityscape and the mountains in the background was really beautiful, particularly as the sun was setting. However, we did grip the bar that connected the seat to the wire ever so tightly and, when we had the choice of what method we’d use to get back down from the castle, we both quickly decided that the cable car was the better choice. It was an experience, some might call it fun but none would go as far as to say exhilarating – just plain old dangerous fun!
The English language has words for small oranges, (clementines, satsumas, tangerines, mandarins etc,) but I don’t think there‘s a word that I know of that is like an umbrella term for these types of fruit. Just “small oranges”, I think. In Japanese, it is differentiated between an orange (the big circular fruit, matching colour to item name) and these smaller, sometimes different shaped, varieties. They are called “mikan”. For ease, I will therefore use the term mikan for the rest of this blog.
Why am I even talking about mikan though? Well if the title of this blog wasn’t a big giveaway, it’s because Ehime prefecture is famous for mikan. It is the land of mikan if you will, alongside its neighbour Wakayama. Sammy and I absolutely love mikan, so we were in our element in Ehime. Multiple times we went to places and got samples of different varieties of the mikan juice they sold, to try as many as we could before crossing the border into Kagawa. Even after leaving Ehime, we made sure to pack many bottles and cans, of at least six different varieties of the mikan juice, for us to enjoy each morning of our holiday for breakfast. It was dreamy. I am missing the mikan already.
I am blabbing on though, about essentially orange juice, and not getting to the pictures fast enough. I will try to be more concise from now on, but no promises because Ehime really did charm us with its specialty so I’m still a bit hypnotised even now. In Matsuyama we basically had our first mikan sample trays in a shop specifically designed for the job. We got the different juices from taps in the wall (literally like water taps) and because there were two of us and we could get three types each for the price, we got to try more varieties. Lucky us! We also did a lot of mikan-based souvenir shopping, and we went to the first hot springs of the trip – and believe me, there were many! Actually, I went to more hot springs on the trip than there were days, as two days I went in the hot springs in both the morning and the evening. We are onsen crazy too it seems. They are worth the hype though, and they did rejuvenate our tired bodies.
We drove up the western coast of Ehime and then along the Northern coast into Kagawa, stopping along the way to see the Kurushima-Kaikyo Bridge and in Oura to see Nogotsuna island, Mizuki island, Nakajima island and get pictures of more distant islands like Kurahashi-jima. The beaches were white, the water was so beautifully clear and the weather was to die for. With our sunglasses on and our playlists blaring, it was the highlight of our trip for me. It was so nice that we have decided we will go back on holiday just to Ehime next time, just to have more time amongst the islands, sands and mikans.
