# Furuiwaya Onsen

The road to Furuiwaya climbs steadily into the mountains of Kuma Kogen, a plateau town in the interior of Ehime Prefecture that most visitors to Shikoku never reach. Some seventy minutes by bus from Matsuyama, the landscape gradually empties of convenience stores and traffic, until there is little left but cedar, rock, and the sense that the island has folded itself inward. The onsen sits at the base of Furuiwaya — a formation of ancient rock designated as a place of national scenic beauty — and the single inn, Furuiwaya-so, stands directly before it. There is nowhere else to stay. That fact alone changes the quality of an evening here.

The waters are an alkaline cold mineral spring, which means they arrive from the earth without heat and must be warmed before bathing. Something in that process gives the bath a particular gentleness, a softness that sits differently on the skin than the assertive sulfur springs of better-known resorts. This has been a place where Shikoku pilgrims pause since the inn opened in 1974, walking the 88-temple circuit that loops through these mountains. Their presence gives Furuiwaya-so a quiet seriousness. People come here having walked some distance; they are not passing through casually.

To stay several nights would be to fall into the rhythm of the rock face itself — mornings when mist clings to the crags above the inn, evenings when the last daylight leaves the stone slowly and the bath is waiting. The pilgrims may have moved on by then, continuing their circuit through the dark interior of Shikoku, and the place becomes almost entirely still.