Matsuyama castle | raccoongirl

To celebrate my one-week of stay in Matsuyama, I hopped on my bike and navigated the streets with Bluey, a map of the city, and iPhone GPS.

Our destinations: Fuji Grand (a 6-storey shopping mall) and Nitori (a furniture and interior goods store).

From the university main gate,we to crossed a railway street, and one of the main roads, the Heiwadori. (sorry, no pics)

From the Heiwadori road, the road will fork into left and right streets.

The first thing that you will see on the right street is the entrance for Matsuyama castle. You can easily see it because of the stairs going to the castle.

Just 5 meters from here is the equestrian statue of Kato Yoshiaki, the first Lord of Matsuyama Castle.

Further down is the Matsuyama Castle ropeway station. (I have yet to know the price for the round trip chairlift ride going to the castle.)

The road down the lane is lined with restaurants, shops, and cafes. How I love to walk/bicycle along this street! The cobbled pavement and the lampposts gives me a feeling of quaintness. April, another Filipina student, likened this road to Diagon Alley, a street in Harry Potter. Come to think of it, it does look like Diagon Alley especially at nighttime.

At the end of this street is another main road, Ichibancho, where all the buses and trains pass by. Across this is the Okaido which houses an arcade of shops and restaurants.

I did not cross the road, instead I turned right immediately. The next street on the right is the Sakano Ueno Kumo Museum, inspired by the novel Saka no ue no kumo, written by Ryotaro Shiba.

Along this side of the road is the Prefectural Building with its dome-shaped roof at the center.

The Prefectural building is the last building on the right side of Ichibancho. I have to cross the street and get on the left side of a bridge which is part of the castle park.