Ehime occupies the northwestern quarter of Shikoku with a coastline that faces the Seto Inland Sea, a geography that produces the particular quality of light — soft, diffused, bouncing off moving water — that makes everything here look slightly more beautiful than it would somewhere else. The prefecture has the mix that honeymoon travel requires: historic towns that reward slow walking, accommodation that prioritises private experience over communal tourism, an onsen tradition that has been perfecting the art of restorative bathing for three thousand years, and long stretches of open road and island cycling where the only agenda is the view. This guide covers Ehime’s most romantic experiences in practical detail.
Dogo Onsen: Private Baths and Ceremonial Bathing
Dogo Onsen in eastern Matsuyama is the oldest hot spring in Japan. The spring water has been flowing continuously since antiquity, and the neighbourhood that has grown around it — the wooden Honkan building from 1894, the covered arcade shopping street, the lantern-lit approach in the evenings — carries the particular gravity of places that have been meaningful for a very long time.
For honeymooners, the most appropriate experience at Dogo Onsen is not the communal public bath but a private reserved session (kashikiri-buro) at one of the surrounding ryokan. Several establishments in the Dogo area offer private bathing rooms — tiled or stone-finished rooms with their own onsen-fed tub — that can be reserved by the hour. Prices typically run from ¥3,000 to ¥6,000 for a 45-to-60-minute session. The privacy of these baths, combined with the quality of Dogo’s alkaline sodium bicarbonate water (which leaves skin noticeably smooth), makes this one of the most genuinely intimate onsen experiences in western Japan.
Staying at a Dogo Ryokan
The Dogo area has a number of traditional ryokan where the full kaiseki dinner, yukata, and morning bath experience can be enjoyed in a room that looks onto private gardens or inner courtyard scenery. Rates in this area run from approximately ¥25,000 to ¥60,000 per person per night with dinner and breakfast included. For couples, the higher end of this range typically secures rooms with private terraces or in-room baths in addition to access to the communal hot spring facilities.
The ritual of a ryokan evening — arriving to find yukata laid out, being served a multi-course dinner in the room, soaking in the bath after dinner while the town quiets around you — is the kind of experience that travels in memory in a way that a hotel room does not. Dogo Onsen Honkan is visible from the upper-storey windows of several nearby ryokan; request a room with that view when booking.
Ozu: Castle Town on the Hiji River
Ozu is frequently described as “Little Kyoto” in Japanese travel writing, and while the comparison is inexact, it captures something true about the town’s character: it is a place of preserved streetscapes, careful proportions, and a sense that aesthetics have been attended to across generations. The Hiji River curves through the town past the castle promontory and a hillside villa called Garyu Sanso, and the quality of light over the river at dusk — particularly in summer when cormorant fishing (ukai) is performed by lamplight on the water — is something that visitors tend to photograph extensively and remember even better than the photographs suggest.
Funaya River-View Accommodation
The funaya are traditional boathouse structures built at the river’s edge, originally used by merchants and fishermen to moor vessels and store river goods. Several have been converted into accommodation — sleeping and eating in a room whose sliding doors open directly onto the moving surface of the Hiji River. The sense of connection to the water is immediate and continuous: you hear the current, see light reflected off the surface, and wake to the river at the same level as your bedding. Funaya accommodation in Ozu represents one of the most distinctive sleeping experiences in all of Shikoku. Rates vary by property but typically run from ¥20,000 to ¥40,000 per person with meals. Advance booking is essential as the supply is limited.
Garyu Sanso Villa
Garyu Sanso is a Meiji-era private villa built between 1907 and 1908 by a wealthy merchant on a hillside overlooking the river bend. The architecture is celebrated for the quality of its joinery, the integration of interior and garden, and the unusual arrangement of rooms connected by a zigzag corridor — each turn revealing a new angle of the garden and river below. Admission is ¥550. The villa is best visited in late afternoon when the sun moves behind the hill and the garden takes on a cooler, more intimate quality. Combined with a river walk along the embankment below and a dinner at one of Ozu’s traditional restaurants, Garyu Sanso makes for a full and romantic afternoon.
Shimanami Kaido: Cycling at Sunset
The Shimanami Kaido cycling route from Imabari to Onomichi covers approximately 70 kilometres across six islands connected by ten bridges. For couples, the most romantically compelling section is the late-afternoon ride on Oshima Island and across the Kurushima Kaikyo Bridge — a triple-suspension bridge crossing one of the most dramatic tidal strait landscapes in Japan. In the hour before sunset, the light over the Seto Sea turns a deep amber-gold, the silhouettes of small islands appear in layers across the water, and the bridge cables catch the light in a way that makes the structure look more like sculpture than engineering.
Rental bicycles from Imabari Station’s Sunrise Itoyama terminal start at ¥2,000 per day; electric-assist bikes, which reduce the effort of the bridge approach ramps and allow more attention to the view, are available for an additional ¥1,000. A late-morning departure from Imabari places you on Oshima Island in early afternoon, leaving time to explore the island’s quiet lanes and small citrus farms before positioning on the bridge approach for the hour before sunset.
Omishima Island Luxury Stay
For couples who want to extend the Shimanami experience into an overnight stay, Omishima Island — one island further along the route — offers ryokan accommodation adjacent to the Oyamazumi Shrine. The island has a quieter, more remote character than the areas near Imabari or Onomichi, and staying overnight on the island means experiencing the Seto Sea both at sunset and again in the pale early-morning light when fishing boats move across the water below the shrine’s approach. Upper-tier accommodation on Omishima runs from ¥25,000 to ¥50,000 per person with meals.
Iyonada Monogatari Scenic Train
The Iyonada Monogatari is a reservation-required scenic tourist train operated by JR Shikoku along the coastal Yosan Line between Matsuyama and Uwajima via Iyo-Nagahama. The train runs on weekends and selected weekdays in three distinct routes named after the seasons of the tides — Dou, Seto, and Tsuki. The interior is finished in wood and local craft materials, and food and drink sourced from producers along the Seto coastline is served at the seats during the journey.
The coastal stretch between Iyo-Nagahama and Shimonada passes directly alongside the ocean — in places, the track runs so close to the waterline that the view from the train window is essentially the sea surface. This section, briefly visible on the return leg from Matsuyama in the late afternoon, offers one of the most memorable train window views in western Japan. The reservation fee for seating is ¥800 in addition to the standard fare for the distance travelled. Reservations open one month in advance and sell out quickly for weekend departures; book as early as possible.
Practical Notes for a Romantic Ehime Trip
A four-night itinerary that covers the main honeymoon experiences — two nights at a Dogo Onsen ryokan, one night at a funaya in Ozu, and one night on Omishima Island — requires either a rental car or careful attention to local bus and train timetables. Ozu is approximately 50 minutes from Matsuyama by the JR Yosan Line or by the Iyotetsu bus network. Imabari, the gateway to the Shimanami Kaido, is 40 minutes from Matsuyama by JR limited express (¥1,750).
The best seasons for a romantic Ehime trip are late April through early June, when citrus groves flower along the cycling route and temperatures are moderate, and mid-October through November, when autumn light over the Seto Sea turns the bridges and island silhouettes into the kind of scene that appears on tourism posters.