Uwajima Onsen Ehime Toshiue

Uwajima Onsen Ehime Toshiue is a thermal facility in Uwajima City on the southern coast of Ehime Prefecture in Shikoku, a proud castle city with a remarkably distinctive local culture including the togyu bull-sumo tradition in which bulls are matched against each other in bouts of strength and perseverance rather than against humans, a practice brought to the region from the Netherlands during the Edo period and now maintained as one of Shikoku's most characteristic and enthusiastically supported regional spectacles. Uwajima Castle, one of Japan's twelve original unaltered feudal castles, stands on a wooded hill above the city in compact three-tiered elegance, and the Taga Shrine dedicated to fertility and human sexuality houses one of Japan's most unconventional religious museums displaying artifacts of Shinto reproductive symbolism in a tradition of frank natural celebration entirely normal within the Japanese Shinto framework. The bicarbonate thermal waters here invite visitors to this characterful southern Shikoku city whose seafood riches of the Uwa Sea — including the prized sea bream (tai) raised in the submerged net farms of the Uwa Sea's warm currents — combine with bull sumo, castle heritage, and Shinto folk religion to create one of Japan's most authentic and individually flavored regional urban personalities.