Imabari produces more towels than anywhere else in Japan, and has been producing them since the late nineteenth century when textile manufacturing came to the Seto Inland Sea coast. The quality of Imabari towels — their absorbency, their durability, the particular softness that increases with washing — is attributed in part to the city's water, which is exceptionally soft and gentle on cotton fiber. The dyeing workshops available in Imabari offer the experience of applying color to a white towel using traditional methods — tie-dyeing, stenciling, hand-painting — and taking home something you made at the source. The object itself may not be significantly different from a towel you could buy. What is different is the context in which you made it. Imabari sits at the Ehime end of the Shimanami Kaido, the island-hopping cycling route that crosses the Seto Inland Sea to Onomichi in Hiroshima. Many visitors arrive by bicycle. The combination of the cycling route and the towel experience — arriving physically tired, making something soft with your hands, leaving with an object that will serve you in the bath for years — is one of those travel combinations that turns out to be more coherent than it first appears.