The city of Matsuyama on Shikoku island is quite big but feels very provincial and comfortable. You are now away from the big cities of the mainland.
The main tourist attraction must be the Matsuyama Castle that is situated on a hill overlooking the city. You can reach the castle by a ropeway if you don’t want to walk.
The view from the castle is spectacular. You can overlook the city and the Seto inland sea. We were lucky to be there when the sun was setting. The castle itself was very beautiful and apart from other castles in Japan there where actually a lot of interesting exhibitions inside. You could among other things dress up like a samurai.
The stairs in the castle were very steep and slippery without shoes especially because we carried our son of 2 years of age. Fortunately there were a short cut rout (also atypical in Japan) so we missed some floors.
We found the number of tourists relative limited. I can highly recommend a visit to this place.
If you want to see how we sailed to and from Matsuyama see my video on this:
The video contains stills and HD video.
AloJapan.com