Sun Rapport Murakumo

Matsue

by hoshisato

"Overview"

We had booked the Hotel New Urban which had an onsen at the 4th floor with a view over beautiful Lake Shinji. While looking for a restaurant that appealed to us, we had wandered almost back to the station and in a little shabby area with several soap land parlors we found an izakaya style restaurant that served the type of food we had been looking for and it turned out to be a very nice restaurant with an own style and not just another franchise of a big restaurant chain. It was called Rokumonsen.

The next day we bought a multi-pass and visited the castle which is one of the few remaining original medieval castles in Japan and from there we walked over to Lafcadio Hearn's residence. Lafcadio Hearn is better known in Japan as Koizumi Yakumo and is especially well-known to the Japanese for his collections of Japanese legends and ghost stories. The residence is very well kept and has a nice garden which doesn't date back from the time Lafcadio Hearn lived there but was created by the father of the current owner as exercise. Finally we visited the samurai house which is just a short walk from the Lafcadio Hearn residence. It was worth the visit, but not exceptionally interesting to either of us at least.

The local specialties include the tiny shizimi shellfish caught in L