The Shiokaze limited express is surprisingly full for a Wednesday mid morning in June. Outside on the platform in Okayama, Japanese and foreign tourists hustle to find their carriage and their seat on the brightly painted “Anpanman” train.

My neighbour, a man who could be 18 or 38, with his round face, round glasses and tiny backpack, takes photos of his convenience store mince bento with a point and click canon camera. His novel and a bag of chips wait to be enjoyed later. Suddenly, I feel like it’s 2006 again.

The Shiokaze sets off, crossing the bridge connecting main island Honshu with Shikoku. The humidity is high today, and the islands float on misty platforms. The trip to Matsuyama, Ehime prefecture, is almost 3 hours of rocking, rolling riding past water filled rice fields, through mountains, and along the calm Seto inland sea. My neighbour snaps surprisingly few shots before he curls his legs up on his suitcase and sleeps.

I prepare for an interview with Watanabe Hiroyuki, Shikoku’s first transgender city councillor. Watanabe is originally from Kyoto, but has lived in Matsuyama for over 13 years. Watanabe talks about how kind the people are, and how a desire to give back was the motivation to run for office.

The motion of the train makes watching a screen nauseating. A visit to the Japanese style squat toilet doesn’t help, but on exiting I discover there is a Western style toilet at the other end of the carriage. Oh well.

Arriving in steamy Matsuyama an hour before my interview, I have my first inkling of how friendly Matsuyama is. Rushing to cross a road, I realise midway that the light for cars has turned green. No worries, I can wait on the island until the lights change. But the drivers wait, and wave me across. Good thing too. A cheerful orange Iyo Tetsudo tram trundles through the “island” where I was standing moments earlier. Oops.

I enter a highly rated Indian restaurant receiving, not only a smile, not only an iraashaemase, but also an, atsui ne! Like we know each other. Like we’re friends!

Where have you come from today? The waitress, Mayu, asks.

Kyoto. I live there.

Really? She asks, leaning over my table, her voice lifting with a wistful lilt.

Over the course of lunch, there are times when Mayu pulls up a chair to chat with me, or carries on a conversation while passing meals or ringing up the bill for other customers. She tells me about her Nepali coworkers and how they are suffering culture shock, and how Japan’s economy is slipping so much that it’s less attractive to overseas migrants from Vietnam than before. We discuss the difficulties of international relationships, how foreigners get mean when they drink, and that Kyoto is not a good place to eat fish, though meat is good there, and how this two week period in late June/early July is the quietest point in the year – isn’t that weird!? She writes down the name of the omiyage I should buy and from which part of the station.

Yamadaya Manju. Forget about Bocchan. It looks cute, but the taste is…

The shop closes at 3. The Nepali staff left at 2:30, and the lights are switched off. Mayu sits in a chair chatting with me, the last customer, struggling to finish my naan while having a longer conversation with a stranger than I’ve had in years.

Belly full of bread and heart full of friendly warnings to take care in the heat, I cross back to the station.

I have forgotten to bring omiyage for Watanabe. A cute cookie store named Aunt Stella, sells sunflower patterned packs of its most popular cookies. I buy one, knowing at least there is some humour in buying a souvenir from the station of the place someone lives.

Watanabe calls me and we meet at last and leads to where they’ve been waiting, inside the cafe area of Aunt Stella’s…

My omiyage and apologies are received with all seriousness and surprise that I went to the effort.

A year in office and the realities of being the most visible LBGT representative (or panda as Watanabe calls it) in a conservative prefecture, have been heavy. When I mention how kind I’ve found Matsuyama already, Watanabe laughs, noting that foreigners are so rare here that people are probably kind out of nervousness.

Our conversation focuses on the experience of being a sexual minority in rural Japan, and how it contrasts with big cities like Osaka, where Watanabe worked for almost 20 years in bars.

Zen zen chigau. It’s completely different. Watanabe says in beautiful, broad Kansai ben.

Coming out is not done much in Ehime. Family pressure for children is very strong. Matsuyama, like Kyoto, is full of tradition, proud of their past, opposed to change. Ehime is the only prefecture in Shikoku not to have passed the partnership law that recognises same sex relationships, and Watanabe tells me that even within the LGBT community is a group actively opposing it.

But Watanabe is also critical of the loud voices of, particularly younger, LGBT groups pushing aggressively for change, fearing they are alienating possible allies, and losing valuable goodwill.

We need to walk together. Step by step. I don’t want us to have special treatment. I just want people to know we exist and to be treated the same as everyone else.

The issue in Matsuyama, as in Japan as a whole, is that not many people know an openly gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual, let alone any of the other members of the rainbow. Even within the community, there are those who don’t believe bisexuals exist, and those who have never met a transgender person before.

Which is why Watanabe’s position as panda is so important. Being so visible, that people can’t help but stop and stare, and learn that LGBT people do exist.

Watanabe feels that Matsuyama is hungry for change. Even though there are people, colleagues even, who oppose the election of a trans person to city councillor, there are also the 5000+ people who voted them in. The grandmas who come to meet and greets to whisper, ganbare yan.

With my hotel so conveniently (and unwittingly) located near the red light district, Watanabe calls a bar owner friend for me to chat with, and drops me off to relax a few hours before the meeting.

My hotel this time, the Katsuyama, includes breakfast and dinner. A rare find in business hotels! Reviews on the booking site describe a buffet, so I’m confused when I’m served a tray of dishes. Pork, miso soup, pickles, salad, rice and beautiful fresh tai sashimi.

The chef peeks out from the kitchen.

Is everything ok? Anything you don’t like?

I had just bitten into a cold gyoza dumpling, the only unappealing part of the otherwise delicious spread.

It’s all very good. I say.

Reassured, he returns to the kitchen.

Shit, now I’m going to have to eat all this. The massive bowl of rice, too.

A few minutes later, he strides out again.

Hey, you’re here tomorrow night too, right? So, what do you want to eat?

Internal panic ensues. What do I want?? What kind of question… How can I possibly answer this???

I attempt deflection.

I’m really happy with anything. I’m not picky. This is a lot of pressure. What do you suggest?

He will not be dissuaded, returning to the kitchen for a pen and piece of paper.

So what will it be then?

I remember lunch, and the discussion about fish. I ask if it is famous for this region. It must be so fresh, unlike poor, landlocked Kyoto city.

Fish, huh? You don’t hate fish?

No, I love fish.

He heads back into the kitchen and I hear him telling the waitress how I’m from Kyoto and surprisingly don’t hate fish.

I can’t finish the rice, which I know has probably been filled extra to make me, the customer, feel anshin (comfortable). I also know, from my time in Koyasan, that wasting rice in particular, is a sin. Wasting food, in general, is not on.

The chef accepts my apologies with smiling reassurances, and then, with great anticipation I’m his voice, asks me not to eat any fish the next day.

Walking to meet Watanabe’s friend, Buri, I traverse a neon drinking district full of oversized portraits of hostesses; dyed blonde, shaggy headed men in suits smoking; and the plastic flower target boards set up to celebrate a new shop’s (typically pachinko or bars opening).

Bri Bri mixed gay bar (open to men and women), has a beautiful clean, wooden interior, reminiscent of a sauna. Probably intentionally so. The owner, Buri, is friendly and makes an excellent ginger hi-ball (scotch and dry). His bar’s mascot is a piggy, as Buri himself is full of “pocchari” chub cuteness. The nickname, he explains, is a product of an era.

Gays of my generation all had fish names. My friend is Karei, another is Sake, I’m Buri. Before that was birds.

At 8pm, no customers have arrived, so we chat about his coming out, and why family and work pressures prevent his long-term boyfriend from doing so. He shrugs.

It can’t be helped. At least neither of us are chonan, elder sons, that pressure would be too much. I probably wouldn’t have been able to.

Buri is an active member of the pro-partnership group, Colorful Matsuyama, and dreams of the ceremony with his partner, or even marriage one day, if Japan ever follows Taiwan and changes the law.

I buy us both drinks, as I’ve seen people do in small bars like these. He accepts, and I notice my hi-ball hits a little harder this time.

We shift the conversation to the positives of living in Matsuyama. He shows me pictures of his drag performance, and his camping trips to the mountains under the stars.

I tell him about my day and how friendly people in Matsuyama have been. He says that people who move here from the regions, or even other prefectures make friends quickly.

I tell him how coming to Matsuyama has felt like a return to my first years in Japan. Maybe the pace of change in the regions is naturally slower than the cities, but when I first came to Japan in 2006, I was the panda. Children and drunk men on the train would test their English on me. It feels refreshing to experience the chattiness and curiosity of Japanese people again. I’ve become so used to Kyoto, where tourists are part of the white noise and ignored (or suffered).

He says that people are so pleased to have visitors come to Matsuyama. Particularly this week, which is very quiet.

Yes, that’s what I was told at lunch.