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41 places(showing 1–24)
Matsue
One of only twelve surviving original castle keeps in Japan and a designated National Treasure, wrapped in black wood above the moats of the old San'in castle town.
Home to a Japanese garden ranked number one in the country for over two decades, paired with a superb collection of modern nihonga painting.
A museum devoted to Lafcadio Hearn (Koizumi Yakumo), the writer who introduced old Japan to the West and made Matsue his beloved adopted home.
An ancient shrine tied to Japan's oldest love story, famous for the Mirror Pond where visitors divine the timing of their future romance.
A National Treasure shrine whose main hall is the oldest surviving example of the ancient taisha-zukuri style that shaped Izumo's sacred architecture.
A strolling garden on an island in Lake Nakaumi, renowned for its year-round peonies and the local ginseng that made the island famous.
Japan's seventh-largest lake and the soul of the 'water city', famous for one of the most beautiful sunsets in the country over the islet of Yomegashima.
The moss-covered mortuary temple of the Matsudaira lords, famous for hydrangeas and a giant stone turtle.
A preserved middle-class samurai home on Matsue's atmospheric Shiomi Nawate street.
A leisurely moat cruise circling Matsue Castle, with low bridges the boat roof folds down to pass.
Matsue's lakeside hot-spring resort district, famed for sunsets and a free public foot bath.
One of Japan's oldest hot springs, prized since ancient times as a 'beauty' bath, set along a lantern-lit river.
A lakeside art museum that stays open past sunset, with famous 'lucky rabbit' sculptures on its lawn.
An ancient first-rank Izumo shrine and the mythic source of sacred fire, set in a quiet river valley.
A handsome museum beside Matsue Castle telling the castle town's story, with a wagashi cafe and garden.
A historic tea house built in 1779 for the tea-master lord Matsudaira Fumai, one of Japan's finest surviving teahouses.
An ancient and important Shimane shrine, home of Sada Shin Noh sacred dance, inscribed on UNESCO's intangible heritage list.
A hilltop park of vast flower greenhouses and free-flying birds overlooking Lake Shinji, one of Matsue's most family-friendly attractions.
The lone pine-crowned islet on Lake Shinji whose silhouette anchors one of Japan's hundred greatest sunsets.
A vast brackish lagoon and Ramsar wetland east of Matsue that draws tens of thousands of wintering waterbirds.
The 'rollercoaster' concrete bridge over Lake Nakaumi that appears impossibly steep from the right angle.
A quiet 456-metre peak above Matsue with a mountaintop temple and a sweeping view of two lakes and the sea.
A flat volcanic island in Lake Nakaumi blanketed with peony fields and famed for ginseng and lava caves.
A lantern-lit hot spring street where the Tamayu River is lined for two kilometres with cherry trees and free foot baths.
