Shikokuchuo, Ehime

Pulp and paper mills line the narrow coastal plain, and on certain mornings the air carries a faint industrial warmth that mingles with sea salt off the Hiuchi Sea. Shikokuchuo sits where the Houo mountain range presses down from the south and the Seto Inland Sea opens to the north, leaving barely enough flat ground for factories, houses, and the JR Yosan Line threading through. The city came together from several towns only in 2004, and the older names — Kawanoe, Iyomishima, Doi — still surface in conversation and on signboards.

The paper trade is not background here; it is the ground itself. The Kaminomachi Shiryokan traces that history through displayed products and hands-on washi papermaking, while the craft of mizuhiki — the twisted paper cord used in ceremonial gifts — continues as a local specialty. In the mountains behind the city, the Michi-no-Eki Kirinomori sells Kirinomori Daifuku, a fresh-cream mochi made with Shingu tea worked into the dough. The tea itself, grown in the same highland area, has a particular weight to it, suited to the cool air of the plateau.

Come summer, the Iyomishima Taiko Matsuri and Kawanoe Taiko Matsuri fill the streets with percussion that moves through the body rather than past it. Akaboshi-yama rises behind the city, and the Chuo Kozo-sen — the Median Tectonic Line — runs east to west beneath the valley floor, a geological fact that the landscape quietly insists upon.