Dogo Onsen

Dogo Onsen lays claim to being the oldest hot spring in Japan, a place whose history is said to stretch back some three thousand years. It appears in the eighth-century "Nihon Shoki" and in "The Tale of Genji", and is counted among the country's three ancient springs. Legend fills in the rest: the god Okuninushi is said to have healed the ailing deity Sukunahikona in these waters, Prince Shotoku to have come here to bathe, and a white heron to have first revealed the spring after soaking its wounded leg.

The symbol of it all is the Dogo Onsen Honkan, the grand public bathhouse at the heart of the town. Completed in 1894, it's a towering, maze-like warren of wood – bathing halls, tatami rest rooms, and staircases stacked into a castle-like structure crowned with a heron. In 1994 it became the first public bathhouse to be designated an Important Cultural Property, and it's the only site in Ehime to hold three stars in the Michelin Green Guide. It's also widely believed to have inspired the bathhouse in Studio Ghibli's "Spirited Away", though the studio has never confirmed it.

Its fame owes a good deal to literature. The novelist Natsume Soseki taught in Matsuyama in 1895 and drew on the town for "Botchan", one of Japan's best-loved novels – the Honkan still keeps a "Botchan Room" on its top floor, and the poet Masaoka Shiki, another Matsuyama son, is honoured with a museum nearby.

What sets Dogo apart is that its waters run pure. Fed by 18 sources and blended only to even out the temperature, the spring is served neither heated nor diluted – a rare "free-flowing source" bath, prized as a "beauty water". That's true across all three of the town's bathhouses.

The grandest is the Honkan itself. Bathing there is a proper public-bathhouse ritual rather than a resort experience: you pay at the door, soak, and on the higher tickets take tea in a tatami hall afterwards. Most of the baths are walk-in, though its private top-floor rooms run on limited daily time slots and need booking ahead. The Asuka-no-Yu is a newer bath built in the architectural style of the seventh-century Asuka period, decked out with Ehime crafts and contemporary art, and offering the open-air baths and a private imperial-style bath the Honkan lacks. The Tsubaki-no-Yu is the plainer, much-loved bath that Matsuyama residents use day to day. A combined "three-bath" pass covers all three at around 20% off the individual prices.

The whole quarter is made for strolling in a yukata between soaks. Foot baths are dotted around, a retro arcade runs off the main street, and the restored Botchan steam train pulls into Dogo Onsen Station, where a mechanical clock modelled on the Honkan's tower comes to life on the hour with characters from the novel.