Matsue - Underrated Gem on Japan's Left Coast

Featuring some of Japan's best seafood and a plethora of spectacular sights nearby, this little-known city could have rivaled Hiroshima as West Japan's premier tourist destination -- if only it were located on the Shinkansen route.



To the Japanese themselves remote Matsue evokes many images. To photographers it boasts the nation's most dramatic sunset. To history bluffs, one of Japan's most majestic castles with a Samurai quarter built along its moat. To foodies, Matsuba-gani snow crabs and time-honoured Wagashi sweets. To others, gateway to the world's top Japanese garden and the nation's second most important shrine.



Impressive isn't it? But Matsue is located on the secluded San'in Coast, nowhere near a Shinkansen and thus largely ignored by international tourists shuttling between iconic Kyoto and Hiroshima. Over 3 nights in town we saw less than 10 foreigners, which was night-and-day compared with our previous homebase of Kurashiki, let alone Kyoto in the popular autumn season.



In fact foreigners were so preciously few that numerous discounts were offered to anyone producing a non-Japanese passport, from half-price entry to the castle to 30% off sunset cruises to a staggering 1150 yen discount for the gorgeous Adachi Museum. The local government was desperate to put San'in on the international traveler's radar.



But the absolute best deal was JR's San'in Okayama Area Pass, the cheapest JR Pass anywhere in Japan at a ridiculous 1125 yen (CAD$13) per day for 4 days, including Express Train privileges! Showing my pass to a local resident on the final day made his eyes green with envy -- I must have racked up 13000 yen's worth of train rides with it.



It all started on Day 5 of our 16-Day Circle Route when we activated our pass at Kurashiki, stopped by Bitchu-Takahashi's mountaintop castle and arrived in the late afternoon at Matsue, a sprawling city of bridges, winding castle moats and one of the smallest populations among Japan's 47 prefecture capitals. This would serve as our homebase for the next three nights as we day-tripped to Kurayoshi, Adachi Museum and Izumo Taisha.



The next morning we started exploring Matsue and its imposing 400-year-old stronghold, surrounded by a willow-swept moat now entrusted with holding back onslaughts from legions of elementary school students on field trips. The 5-storey citadel was much larger and more sophisticated compared with Bitchu-Matsuyama, though not quite as extravagant as World Heritage Himeji, the ultimate benchmark of all Japanese castles.



Once the seat of the local Daimyo during the Edo Period, Matsue Castle still affords a sweeping panorama of the former feudal domain from Lake Shinji to the west, tracing the Ohashi River and leading into the inner sea of Nakaumi in the east. Most popular among visitors was the southerly view towards the enigmatic island of Yomegashima, Matsue's most recognizable landmark after the castle.



After the castle we continued north, passing the red Torii gates of Jozan Inari Shrine and crossing the moat to Shiomi Nawate, formerly a neighborhood of mid-class Samurai and now home to several small museums and traditional Soba restaurants. Compared with the brilliant red maples at Bitchu-Takahashi the previous day, branches were already bare in mid November here on the wintry San'in Coast.



A key attraction at Shiomi Nawate was the little Machiya of Matsue's favorite adopted son, writer Lafcadio Hearn who married into a prominent local clan in the 1890s and published several influential books on Japanese culture. Between Hearn's house and memorial museum, the nearby Samurai Residence and the 18th Century teahouse of Meimei-An, this 500m stretch of the castle moat was quite enough for a busy morning's sightseeing.



One of our highlights at Matsue was an excellent lunch of Ramen in Flying Fish Broth at the locally renowned Menya Hibari (see next post for details). After a lazy afternoon break at our rental apartment, we paid a visit to the Shimane Art Museum searching for its crowd favorite bunnies, without realizing that we could have done this for free as they were installed as a free exhibit outside of the museum!



Like the majority of Japanese visitors, we visited the museum not for its exhibits but for its strategic location on the shoreline, a front-row seat to one of Japan's most famous sunsets. The shallow brackish waters of Lake Shinji nurture some of West Japan's best seafood year round, as this blue heron would concur.



What makes the Lake Shinji sunset special to the Japanese is the silhouette of the revered Yomegashima, an uninhabited sanctuary of a few pine trees, stone Jizo statues and a Torii gate. The island was off-limit during our visit, and generally would be aside from several days a year when the locals would tie a long rope between the shore and the island for a bizarre hike through the 1.4 m deep water.



I took this picture amidst several hundred Japanese who amassed along the shoreline despite the frigid temperature -- and this likely happens every day of the year. As the sun descended upon the horizon, latecomers made their mad dash towards the designated sunset-watching spot, 400m south of the Art Museum. Mother nature did not disappoint on this day.



While we did take Matsue's local buses a couple times, most of these attractions were within walking distance from our rental apartment, 5 minutes west of the train station. It was your prototypical pint-sized Japanese flat with a 6-jo Tatami room, a living/dining area, kitchen and bathroom crammed into 25 square metres of space.



Our first ever experience with Airbnb turned out slightly disappointing due to the lack of cleanliness in our apartment, which I find rare in Japan compared with most other countries. While track noise was an issue as disclosed by the landlord, it was manageable as trains stopped running before midnight and were quite infrequent in the early morning.



While the kitchen was quite functional with an induction stove top and the Japanese essential of rice cooker, the owner failed to clean out the residual garbage from the previous tenant. On the positive side, I ended up learning the local rules for garbage disposal and recycling.



The one truly indispensable feature turned out to be the Japanese combo of washer-dryer, a life-saver for any independent traveler on a long cross-country journey. Japanese coin laundry shops are NOT cheap, and we're quite thankful for the washing machines in this apartment as well as at our next homebase of Yunotsu.



One of our favorite pastimes in Matsue was to sample its nationally-famous tradition of Wagashi sweets, pictured here with seasonal offerings from two of the city's revered confectioneries, the 200-year-old Keigetsudo and the 140-year-old Saiundo. To understand its appeal one needs to look no further than the orange-coloured Yuzugomoro, a truly meticulous piece of artwork in which a whole Yuzu citrus had to be candied, hand-scraped clean and refilled with a jelly of sweet Azuki beans ... and available at a peasant-friendly price of 280 yen!



While the candied Yuzu would traditionally be accompanied by strong Matcha, it also went exceptionally well with the local dessert wine of Kumo no Yuzuzake, a sweet concoction of Yuzu citrus from nearby Izumo. That's just a foretaste of local flavors at this fascinating corner of Japan -- the restaurants reviews are coming, in the next two articles.

Bitchu-Takahashi - Mountain Top Castle in Blazing Autumn Foliage

This was a last-minute addition to our 16-day trip that we're glad we didn't skip.



In retrospect this might have been the most vibrant autumn foliage we have ever encountered. And this comes from a Canadian -- trust me, I have seen plenty of autumn foliage in a country sporting a red maple leaf on our national flag. There's even a row of maples near my house, but this was something special.



We're up in the mountains of West Japan, at a historic castle often shrouded by mist and known to locals as Castle-in-the-Sky. Without realizing the effect of higher elevation on the ripening of foliage, we walked straight into the peak of fall colours.



Starting from the planning stages, the timing of our 16-day West Japan trip had been designed to coincide with the highly anticipated season of Koyo, or red leaves in Japanese. This was the time of year when domestic Japanese tourists swarm every major temple in Kyoto, which was precisely why we chose the road less traveled, especially on our way to Japan's Sanin Coast.



The height of the so-called Koyo-Zensen, or Red-Leaf-Front, was supposed to start in Hokkaido in October, gradually move south and reach Hiroshima by late November. In fact Hiroshima's Shukkeien garden always schedules its annual Momiji illumination festival in the third or fourth week of November. We half-expected the climax to be around November 25 upon our arrival at Hiroshima, but it came 10 day early, right here at Bitchu-Takahashi.



And we almost skipped this gorgeous little gem. Just a few weeks prior to departure I debated skipping Bitchu-Takahashi and opt for either Kibi Plain's ancient shrines or Fukiya's historic town, but the lure of a mountaintop castle was simply too tempting. That said, getting to the castle was rumored to involve either a 1.5 hour hike or a potentially expensive taxi ride. As we found out, there's a much easier way that the Japanese themselves take, but is seldom mentioned on the English side of the Internet.



You see, the town's tourism office organizes a shuttle service between their office in front of the train station and the castle, four times a day, every day. This cost 500 yen per person per way which is reasonable for saving an hour's time for sightseeing, and on the way back it's possible to ask the driver to drop off in front of the famous Raikyuji Temple and the nearby Samurai Residences. If this sounds too good to be true, you are right ...



Now here's the caveat. Reservation is mandatory and must be made prior to 17:00 the previous day, only by calling the Tourism Office -- as of 2017 they still do not take reservations by email. I managed to reserve using my dreadful Japanese, and I'm not convinced that their English is much better. But even without reservations, if you're visiting on a weekend you may be able to catch the popular 09:50 departure booked by Japanese visitors. And if that doesn't work, a private taxi cost about 1500 yen according to fellow blogger YTSL, who can also advise readers on how to hike down from the castle.

If you're interested, check the Tourism Office's official website (in Japanese) for details on the shuttle departure times.



Our shuttle dropped everyone off at the Fuigo-toge parking lot alongside a couple busloads of Japanese seniors from Kansai, still a 20 minutes hike from the castle compound through some shaded woods and slippery steps from last night's rainstorm. Walking sticks were provided for free, and would become handy on the way down.



Our first wow moment came after 15 minutes as we reached the castle's first line of fortification, menacingly perched upon a 15 metre stonewall and crowned by flaming maples at the height of their seasonal brilliance. The famous Koyo-Zensen had thoroughly arrived when we least expected.



This was less than 24 hours after our visit of Okayama's 300-year-old Koraku-en garden, where most of the maples were at least a week away from turning fully red in the mild climate of the Seto Inland Sea. But here at Bitchu-Takahashi, 400m above sea level, one more week would see the end of Koyo season.



Amidst dazzling fall colors we made our final ascent to Bitchu Matsuyama-jo, a 300-year-old citadel regarded as one of Japan's Three Great Mountain Castles. In fact this place is so famous for its mountaintop scenery that the local tourism office organizes yet another shared taxi service to chauffeur early morning visitors to a neighboring mountain just to see the castle floating above a sea of clouds. If you fancy getting here at 08:00 and don't mind spending 1500 yen, call the tourism office a day ahead and ask for the Unkai Taxi.



At last we reached Matsuyama-jo's final ring of fortifications at the mountaintop, 25 minutes after starting our hike from the parking lot. While the citadel itself had fully emerged from the morning mist that coined the nickname Castle-in-the-Sky, the town of Bitchu-Takahashi below was still enshrouded behind a layer of mist and clouds.



After a brief 20 minute stay and a final panorama from the top of the castle, we had to hurry back to the parking lot to catch the return shuttle at 11:40. We could have stayed a little longer in retrospect as the bottom half of the return path was a paved vehicle road, cutting the descent to less than 20 minutes even with photo stops along the way.



On the way back we asked the shuttle driver to drop us off at Bitchu-Takahashi's charming Buke-Yashiki, or Samurai Residences. To our surprise none of the Japanese visitors wanted off at our stop, and we were able to enjoy these immaculate 180-year-old mansions essentially all by ourselves.



Originally developed during the feudal era as a community of local government officials and public servants, the old Samurai district still carries the name of Ishibiyacho, or Cannon Town. While only two of the mansions are open for public visits, this formerly prestigious neighborhood is still lined by striking earthen walls and mossy rooftiles from a bygone era.



We spent about 45 minutes between the Orii Residence and the Haibara Residence, resting on the Tatami floor and enjoying the view of the manicured pine gardens beyond the veranda. The curator of the Haibara Residence was even able to speak reasonable English -- which was very rare in rural Japan -- and guided us through some of the more interesting exhibits.



Aside from the history, the blazing red leaves above the town's earthen walls were simply some of the most colorful of our 16-day trip. One particular red maple on a side alley north of Raikyuji Temple produced the most beautiful autumn foliage I had ever seen.



One block south of the Samurai Residences we reached the town's star attraction, a 400-year-old dry landscape garden designed by one of Edo Period's great tea masters. Featuring artificial islands of greenery and a borrowed backdrop of local mountains, Raikyuji Temple's picture-perfect rock garden is a National Designated Scenic Spot and a perennial feature on tourism brochures.



An exquisite garden of such aesthetic quality would have been flooded with international armies of tourists if this were situated in Kyoto, except we're at little-known Bitchu-Takahashi. Even in the popular sightseeing season of autumn, the number of tourists during our visit was in the single digit.



Another block south of Raikyuji stands one of West Japan's famous historic churches, the 120-year-old Takahashi Christian Church established in early Meiji Era when Christianity was barely legalized. The church is situated on the bank of little Kouyagawa river, formerly an outer moat of the castle and now a popular spot for enjoying cherry blossoms in springtime.



With just 40 minutes left before our scheduled train, we stopped for a quick snack at the town's favorite takoyaki-joint of Gomangoku, famous for a local invention known as Yuzu Konnyaku Takoyaki. I have no idea how it tastes compared with regular takoyaki, as it's only available on Saturdays and Sundays after 14:00. If anyone finds out, please drop me a comment below.


Food Review: TENNINDO (Bitchu-Takahashi)
Address: Higashimachi 1877, Takahashi-shi, Okayama Prefecture
Hours: 09:00-18:00, Closed on Sundays
Map: from Google Maps
Directions: From the train station, walk west on the main road for one little block. Turn right into a shopping street. Tennindo is 400m down the street, on the right side, just before the next major cross street.


Our featured food review of Bitchu-Takahashi isn't a restaurant, but a renowned 200-year-old confectionery with a long history of supplying handmade Wagashi sweets to the feudal lord. While I did have this little shop on our itinerary, it was my wife's keen nose that tracked down its elusive storefront. I can't even describe the seductive aroma emanating from the wooden bucket of peeled Yuzu citrus at the front.



The little bag of yellow Mochi cubes on the left was my favorite Wagashi sweet of our entire trip. Period.

A timed-honored recipe of ground Yuzu rind and Mochi powder, the plainly named Yubeshi, or Yuzu Cake, has served as Tennindo's flagship product for seven generations with its chewy texture and the unmistakable perfume of locally harvested Yuzu citrus. For Yuzu lovers like my wife and I, it's a heavenly treat that we slowly relished one cube at a time, before the end of the short 3-day expiry period.



We finished this Yuzu Monaka, a traditional wafer sandwich with tiny nuggets of Yubeshi embedded inside the Azuki bean filling, at the train station as we awaited the express train to our next homebase of Matsue. We never saw Yubeshi on the store shelf again after leaving Bitchu-Takahashi. For any reader planning to visit Bitchu-Takahashi and its mountaintop castle, do your sweet tooth a favor and don't miss this elusive Japanese dessert.

Bill for Two Persons

Yubeshi (150 gram bag)	325 yen
Yuzu Monaka	125 yen
TOTAL	450 yen (CAD$5.3)

Onomichi - Temple Walk, Beef Tongue and Poisonous Okoze Fish

This understatedly photogenic town was our favorite day-trip from our 3-night stay at Kurashiki. An excellent lunch -- in fact two of our favorite lunch entrees in one meal -- has a lot to do with it, but it's also a beloved playground of photographers wielding anything from serious DSLRs to cellphones.



It's easier to be photogenic when you've got a distinguished, indisputable landmark. Okayama has its world famous garden; Bitchu-Takahashi boasts the highest of Japanese mountain castles. But those are the kind of luxury that humble Onomichi lacks.



One could argue that Onomichi is blessed with a variety of little attractions, or that it has no quintessential sight. If you trust its official tourism website, the most popular spot would be Senkoji Park and its sweeping panorama of the Seto Inland Sea. But if you ask anyone who has gotten lost among Onomichi's entanglement of steep alleys, the town's inner charm runs so much deeper.



Onomichi can represent vastly different things to different people -- literary greats to most Japanese, serene temples to most foreigners, starting point of the 60km Shimanami Kaido to cyclists, Showa-era cinema to film bluffs, and Maneki Neko to cat lovers. And we would form our own opinion by the end of our day.



To properly understand Onomichi, a good starting point is the city's 2015 induction into Japan Heritage, which described it as "the city of miniature landscape, woven together by the Onomichi waterway since the Middle Ages." Yes, miniature landscape, or Hakoniwa in the induction script. Clear as mud?



The cryptic portrayal would become clearer from a bird's eye view from the cable car, where Onomichi would take on a Hakoniwa-like appearance, boxed-in by steep green hills on both sides of the busy waterway, barely two minutes across by ferry. With a narrow city centre only 300m wide and 2km in length, it's ideal for a day-hike from one end to the other, slowly savoring its rambling little alleys on foot.



For day-trippers staying at Okayama or Kurashiki like ourselves, the easiest way to access Onomichi is to buy a Kibi-no-Kuni Odekake Pass, which offers, among other perks, unlimited JR train rides between Okayama and Onomichi for 1950 yen. Bus Stop #1 in front of Onomichi Station has buses departing for the Jodoji-shita bus stop, the starting point of our self-guided walking tour.



The first half of our hike loosely followed Onomichi's famous Temple Walk, a meandering route linking 23 large and small temples over a few short kilometres, starting at the outlying Kairyuji and returning to Onomichi Station at the end. Our 5-minute bus ride took us to Jodoji-shita where this steep flight of stairs lined with Buddhist banners showed the way towards Kairyuji and Jodoji.



The Temple Walk kicks off with a bang at its eastern starting point with a designated National Treasure, the 700-year-old pagoda and main hall of Jodoji. The other National Treasure along the route would come at the very end at Jikoji.



After Jodoji the zigzagging path would continue northwest, passing several smaller temples before taking a sharp detour up the steep stairs of Mount Saikokuji where three more temples await beyond the Edo-era gate and its giant straw sandals.



While the trail to Saikokuji's 3-storey pagoda was closed due to landslides on this day, the trio of temples did provide nice views of Onomichi from the mid-mountain level. After the Saikokuji turnoff the Temple Walk would continue west towards Tenneiji, but we had to take a short diversion from the trail. It was time for lunch.



Fittingly situated next to the shoreline was one of the most respected seafood specialists in town, an Onomichi institution dating back to Year 1915 with a narrow focus on one particular species of local fish. With only 14 seats, we took no chances and reserved our table by email two weeks prior.


Food Review: AOYAGI (Onomichi)
Address: Tsuchidou 2-8-15, Onomichi-shi, Hiroshima Prefecture
Hours: 11:30-14:00 17:00-21:30, Closed on Wednesdays
Map: from Google Maps
Directions: From the train station, walk east along the seaside promenade for about 800m to Hiroshima Bank. Aoyagi is diagonally across from the bank, on the right side on the road.


This was one of the three best lunches of our 16-day trip, served by this tiny eatery with an inconspicuous exterior that belied its 100-year-old history as a local legend.

Like most historic restaurants in Japan, Aoyagi concentrates its effort on one or two time-honoured dishes that it does better than anyone else: a century-old recipe for stewed beef tongue, and poisonous Okoze fish -- one of the most dangerous ingredients in the Japanese chef's repertoire -- prepared in Karaage style.



Not to be confused with poisonous Fugu, the Okoze is an alien-looking fish with harmless white meat but a row of deadly venomous dorsal spines. It's never the diner who gets poisoned (as in the case of Fugu), but the chef himself who braves the grave hazard of losing his hand -- or his life in extreme cases -- to one of the most dangerous toxins known to man.

With such critical demand on the chef's skills, Okoze has always been an exclusive ingredient served only at higher-end restaurants. Just 500m down the street from Aoyagi, the venerable Ryokan Uonobu offers Okoze Karaage and Sashimi meals from 5400 yen to 9000 yen (CAD$64 to $106), which makes Aoyagi's Okoze Karaage Teishoku a relative bargain at 2100 yen (CAD$25). And if you have no desire for anything poisonous on your plate, lunches start from the incredible price of 980 yen (CAD$12) -- now THAT is really cheap for a restaurant of this class.



But Okoze is just half of Aoyagi's fame. Equally famous is the Japanese-French fusion of slow-stewed Beef Tongue in Demi-glace, a 100-year-old recipe passed down from the eatery's early day as a Yoshoku-ya during Emperor Taisho's reign. While the thick slices of beef tongue turned out surprisingly soft and supple, the real magic was the sharp acidity in the rich demi-glace that perfectly balanced the tongue's oiliness. This was by far the best beef tongue either of us have ever had, of any culinary tradition.



Like the excellent Tongue Stew Teishoku, the Okoze Karaage Teishoku also came with a Shiro-Miso soup, Tsukemono and three wonderful Kuchitori appetizers, of which the Mozuku seaweed with Wasabi and the Okara-based salad were particularly enjoyable. Even the simple Shiro-Miso came with a deep Umami derivable only from top quality Katsuobushi. Everything had set the stage for the star entree.



Poisonous Okoze, or stonefish, painstakingly de-spined, dipped in Aoyagi's century-old marinade and crusted with a granular coat of Kudzu starch. The result was an intensely crispy batter that enclosed the succulent, mildly sweet fillets on either side of the surgically removed spine. The smaller fins and tail of the fish were purposely retained and deep-fried to an edible deep crunch that went perfectly with the sweet-and-sour Ponzu dipping provided. I'm not sure if we like the Okoze better than the Beef Tongue -- both were among the most memorable dishes of our trip.



It gets even better. Did I mention that for an extra 700 yen (CAD$8), Chef Aoyama would turn your plain rice into Sea Urchin on Rice? Now that was just the perfect ending to an already fantastic meal. With such premier ingredients and impeccable preparations at the heart of Onomichi for less than 2500 yen per person, we could not have asked for anything more.

Bill for Two Persons

Okoze Karaage Teishoku	2100 yen
Substitute Uni Meshi for Plain Rice	700 yen
Tongue Stew Teishoku	1900 yen
TOTAL	4700 yen (CAD$55)

After a full lunch we rejoined the Temple Walk circuit, taking the cable car up to Senkoji Park for that obligatory panorama of Onomichi's waterway and the series of island-hopping bridges that link Japan's main island with Shikoku. Beneath the 1200-year-old Senkoji the path would split into two -- a flight of precariously steep stairs leading directly to Tenneiji, or an unmarked left path that led to ...



... the famous Neko-no-Hosomichi, or Path of Cats. There was hardly any signage to denote where the path began or ended, only a colourful collection of cat-shaped stone talismans scattered along the way and a make-shift museum dedicated to all things Maneki Neko. Felines were vastly outnumbered by human visitors though, as we came across only one resident cat on this drizzly day.



After Tenneiji we decided to skip the rest of the temples and spent our late afternoon at what may be Onomichi's most under-appreciated sight, a West-Japan-style covered arcade where time seemed to have stopped in the 1960s. Prices were remarkably cheaper compared with Kansai: 1500 yen for a hand-dyed Noren curtain, 650 for a pack of peony grapes and 130 for a hand-fried Senbei cracker with an entire small fish or octopus inside.



To me this is exactly the nostalgic allure of Onomichi, a former seafaring boomtown with a Showa-era towncentre that has been slowly decaying in this age of shrinking populations. The pictured Ueda Toy Store is no longer a toy store, but an anonymous little shop selling locally-made pottery and other household goods.



But there is hope. Bucking the trend is the quaint Anago-no-Nedoko Guesthouse, an antique Machiya residence converted into a modern youth hostel by a non-profit organization aiming to revive Onomichi's historic core, similar in mission to Kurashiki's Machiya Trust. I truly hope that they will be successful in refilling Old Onomichi's increasingly vacant traditional houses.



That evening we returned to our own rented Machiya in Kurashiki, savoring these curious Senbei crackers from Onomichi's arcade. As it turned out our lasting impression of Onomichi wasn't so much the temples or Showa-era cinema or Maneki Neko, but a tiny inconspicuous eatery that served up some of our trip's most memorable dishes -- Poisonous Japanese Okoze, and French Beef Tongue Demi-glace.