Books and Maps
Books
Plan your escape!!! Kinokuniya in Matsuyama has a decent but limited selection of travel guidebooks. For those you can't find there, try www.amazon.co.jp. On their homepage, select to shop 'in English'. The payment process is in
English so it's really easy to use. You may qualify for free delivery and you can also pay COD (cash on delivery).
EPIC in Matsuyama has a fairly large selection of travel guides for various countries around the world, however there is no guarantee that they will be up to date. If you just need some general information or just want to copy off a few pages, check it out.
Finally, the internet is evolving and turning itself into a multi-user-editied phenomenon. Wikitravel is useful for sightseeing tips and info on how to get around places you aren't familiar with. It's not as reliable as Lonely Planet or the Rough Guide, but it's free and you can find it in English anywhere you can find the internet.
Maps
Maps (chizu) of Ehime's cities and other large cities can be found on the first floor of Kinokuniya book store along with Japanese-language travel guides. Especially useful are the maps that are color coded for neighborhoods and show train lines, bus stops, gas stations and other useful landmarks. If you want maps of Japan in English you'll need order these over the internet or have them sent from home. Or perhaps wait until you go to one of the bigger cities, like Osaka to get one.
Maps in Japanese can be very useful. Although the place names are often in kanji many have either hiragana or romaji with the kanji for easy reading. Online, check out www.mapion.co.jp. Google and Yahoo Maps are both quite detailed for Japan as long as you are searching from the Japanese version of the site. Trying to find Japanese street names in English through Google in English is nearly impossible. But these sites are incredibly useful once you can read a little Japanese. If nothing else, try to make a point of getting the name of where you want to go in written down in kanji and use the maps to find it by copy and pasting addresses from other Japanese language web sites. This can be the easiest way to find an elusive hotel sometimes.