#matsuejo

matsue & izumo | november 2-4, 2019

matsue castle, lake shinji, izumo taisha

matsue & izumo, shimane

november 2-4, 2019

>> more photos here <<

i went on my first completely solo trip this weekend! it was a nice, relaxing visit to matsue and izumo in shimane prefecture.

i ended up staying in a capsule hotel in matsue which actually was pretty cool! everything was really up to date and modern and it didn’t feel weird at all to be sleeping in a caspsule. maybe because i’ve already had the experience of staying in hostels while traveling through europe! 

in any case, on the first day there i visited matsue castle and lake shinji for the sunset. matsue castle is actually really cool! it’s a small castle and i elected not to go inside it, but the visual it presented as a black castle was really nice! i spent a lot of time there just enjoying the grounds and taking pictures. after i checked into the capsule hotel i went to lake shinji. i ended up just sitting along the shore and watching the sun set. it was really cloudy though so it wasn’t as spectacular as i thought it’d be. i ended up meeting a german couple there who talked to me about the lack of support for foreigners in a lot of cities in japan haha.

my second day i went to izumo, which is about an hour train ride away. it was really easy to get there, but people kept giving me looks, possibly wondering if the foreigner really knows where they’re going lol. maybe it was because i was alone. in any case, i spent a solid chunk of the day at the shrine. the walk up to the shrine was really nice -- the street was wide and there were lots of really nice-looking shops on both sides of the street. sometimes shrine have really crowded and dumpy-looking shopping streets lol. the shrine itself was really cool; instead of going up to see it, you go downhill. there’s a long pathway that’s split up around a line of trees. apparently the tree path is the path of the gods. once inside the shrine i learned that august is known as the month without deities in all of japan except for izumo, because that month all of the shinto gods gather at izumo shrine. so in izumo, august is the month of the deities. there’s even a place for the gods to stay, which was off limits to visitors. 

izumo is one of the oldest shrines in japan i think, and there’s a tradition there where you clap four times instead of two while praying. i learned later that’s because izumo is associated with finding love, so you clap twice for yourself and twice for your mystery soulmate!