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Matsuyama Castle

Where to stay & onsen

We recommend one night at a hot-spring inn.

Three kinds of nightWhere to stay in Ehime

The choice is really about what kind of night you want. A hot-spring inn feeds you twice and stops you moving. A city hotel is the right answer if you are arriving late or leaving early.

A ryokan or hot-spring inn

Dinner and breakfast brought to you, a bath, and floor bedding laid out while you eat. The price is per person and includes both meals.

Includes 2 meals Book ahead
See ryokan and onsen inns › How an onsen works

A city hotel

Clean, small, reliable and priced per room. Right for early trains, late arrivals and anyone travelling with a large suitcase.

Per roomNear the station
See hotels in Ehime › Getting around

A guesthouse or minshuku

Family-run, cheaper, and often the only option in the countryside.

Ask about cashRural areas
See guesthouses and minshuku ›

Our first choice in Ehime is named below.

Looking for a room in Ehime tonight?

MAP How an onsen works

BookingSix things worth asking before you pay

Ask about these

Meals
Whether dinner and breakfast are included, and what time dinner is served. Inns often serve at a fixed time and will not wait
Tattoos
Ask whether the bath admits them, and ask about a private bath
Private bath
Kashikiri. Many inns have one, and it removes the question of bathing with strangers entirely
Payment
Card or cash. Rural inns are often cash only
Arrival time
Tell them. Inns lock up earlier than hotels
Luggage
They will hold it before check-in and after check-out. Just ask

What a night at an inn is like

Shoes
Off at the entrance. Slippers inside; nothing on the straw matting
The robe
A cotton yukata is provided and is worn to dinner and to the bath. Left side over right
Dinner
Many small dishes, often in your room or a dining room at a set time
Bedding
Laid out on the floor, usually while you are eating
Bathing
Before dinner and again before bed is normal here
Breakfast
Rice, fish, egg, pickles. Ask the night before if you need it early
How an onsen works

Our first choice hereThe one we would book

Funaya

This is the one to aim for in Ehime, and it has been open since about 1627. Fifty-eight rooms, and a Japanese garden with a real stream running through it — not a channel, a stream. Dogo is said to be among the oldest hot springs in the country, and the novelist Natsume Soseki came here repeatedly when this inn stood next door to the old public bath house.

  • Soseki set his novel Botchan in this town. If you have read it in translation, you are staying in the inn he used and walking to the bath house he wrote about. If you have not, the book is short and it is the best possible preparation for a night here.
  • The garden is the reason to stay rather than pass through. A stream, maples, and somewhere to sit — and it changes completely between seasons.
  • The old public bath house is three minutes away and you should go, even though you have a bath in the inn. Going out in a cotton robe and wooden sandals to bathe in a wooden building from 1894, then walking back, is the evening here.
  • Matsuyama Castle is on the hill in the middle of the city, twenty minutes away by tram, and its timber is original. Two things worth doing in one day, from one bed.
Where
Dogo Onsen, Matsuyama — about three minutes on foot from Dogo Onsen station on the Iyotetsu tram, and the same again to the old bath house
Address
1-33 Dogo Yunomachi, Matsuyama, Ehime
Telephone
089-947-0278
Booking
Through the official site, or the booking services below
Worth knowing

Check what is open at the old bath house before you go. It has been through a long programme of repairs building by building, so which baths and which floors you can use has changed more than once — ask at the inn on the day rather than trusting an old web page.

Checked 2026-08-17

MAP Call Official site

Where to go next

Places to see› Food & restaurants› Where to stay & onsen› Getting around› With children / with parents› Back to Ehime› Kagawa› Kochi› Hiroshima› Oita (by ferry)›
Photo: Matsuyama Castle by Jyo81 (ja:User) (CC BY 3.0), via Wikimedia Commons
Photo credits and licences
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