A Day Trip to Matsue
Three of us from J-Hoppers Hiroshima had a day trip to Matsue, Shimane the other day!
Matsue is the capital of Shimane prefectur in western Japan, it use to be a castle town at the 17th century.
We left around 9 in the morning and it was three-hour drive from Hiroshima city.
Honestly I expected not much to see in the city(sorry!), but my first impression of it was so cool. There are still a lot of old Samurai residences around the big castle. You will get some ideas of the old Japanese lives and you can feel the atmosphere there.
First we had some good Izumo soba which is the local specialty in Shimane.
The restaurant right by the castle has been in business for 50 years! The soba was great, of course and It was a cold day, so it warmed us up too.
We visited to the Tourist Information Center at the Matsue station after lunch to get some information.
You can get all the information you need and friendly English and Korean speaking staff will help you there!
We got some good advise and decided to walk around the city central in the afternoon.
The Matsue castle is the symbol of the city and bigger than I expected. You can see the samurai stuff in it and get a great panorama from the top. We also visited Buke-Yashiki(the samurai residence) and the Lafcadio Hearn Memorial museum.
In the evening, we had dinner with some staff from the Information Center and Miss. Heather Dixon who is from England and has lived in Matsue for 7 years. We got a warm welcoming and had a great time together.
A day trip is not enough to see all around the city! We missed some other interesting places to visit - Izumo Shrine and Adachi museum which has the 43,000 square-meter Japanese garden!
I will definitely come back soon!
Matsue is the capital of Shimane prefectur in western Japan, it use to be a castle town at the 17th century.
We left around 9 in the morning and it was three-hour drive from Hiroshima city.
Honestly I expected not much to see in the city(sorry!), but my first impression of it was so cool. There are still a lot of old Samurai residences around the big castle. You will get some ideas of the old Japanese lives and you can feel the atmosphere there.
First we had some good Izumo soba which is the local specialty in Shimane.
The restaurant right by the castle has been in business for 50 years! The soba was great, of course and It was a cold day, so it warmed us up too.
We visited to the Tourist Information Center at the Matsue station after lunch to get some information.
You can get all the information you need and friendly English and Korean speaking staff will help you there!
We got some good advise and decided to walk around the city central in the afternoon.
The Matsue castle is the symbol of the city and bigger than I expected. You can see the samurai stuff in it and get a great panorama from the top. We also visited Buke-Yashiki(the samurai residence) and the Lafcadio Hearn Memorial museum.
In the evening, we had dinner with some staff from the Information Center and Miss. Heather Dixon who is from England and has lived in Matsue for 7 years. We got a warm welcoming and had a great time together.
A day trip is not enough to see all around the city! We missed some other interesting places to visit - Izumo Shrine and Adachi museum which has the 43,000 square-meter Japanese garden!
I will definitely come back soon!
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