The San'in coast, where Honshu keeps its castles and its lake sunsets

The Sanyō Shinkansen runs along Honshū's bright southern belly, from Osaka toward Hiroshima, and most travellers never look at the other shore. The San'in coast — the northern, cloud-facing side — has no bullet train, one slow main line, and the kind of quiet that arrives only when a place is left off the schedule. What waits there is older than the timetable: original castle keeps, a shrine that predates written record, dunes that fall into the Sea of Japan.

Matsue, and a lake that turns the sky over

Matsue sits on a neck of land between the sea and Lake Shinji (Shinjiko), and its castle is one of only twelve in Japan that still keep an original wooden keep — designated a National Treasure in 2015. Admission is ¥680, the gate opens at 08:30, and if you climb the dark, near-vertical stairs at that hour you get the town nearly to yourself. The top floor is unglassed; the wind comes straight off the water and you can see the lake, the Shimane peninsula, and on clear days the pale cone of Daisen to the east.

The moat is still there, and a low flat-bottomed boat called the Horikawa Meguri loops it in fifty minutes for ¥1,600, the boatman ducking his passengers under bridges so low the roof folds down. Afterward, walk the Shiomi Nawate lane along the north moat: earthen samurai walls, the former residence of Lafcadio Hearn (Koizumi Yakumo), and the Meimei-an tea house up a short flight of steps, where a bowl of matcha and a sweet runs ¥410. In the late afternoon, cross to the lake's eastern shore near the prefectural art museum. The water flattens, the small island of Yomegashima blackens against the light, and the whole sky goes copper for ten unhurried minutes.

Izumo, older than the timetable

The Ichibata Electric Railway (Ichibata Densha) leaves from Matsue Shinjiko Onsen station and runs the north lakeshore to Izumo Taisha-mae in about an hour for ¥820 — a single-car train the colour of dried persimmon. Izumo Taisha is among the oldest Shintō shrines in the country, and it keeps its own etiquette: two bows, four claps, one bow, where the rest of Japan claps twice. The approach, the Seidamari-no-michi, is a long avenue of black pines that slopes gently downhill toward the hall, a detail worth slowing for, because almost nothing here asks you to hurry. Over the Kagura-den hangs a rice-straw shimenawa rope roughly thirteen metres long and several tonnes heavy.

Eat Izumo soba before you leave. It comes as warigo — cold buckwheat in three stacked red lacquer rounds, the dark broth poured over the top round and then decanted down. Arakiya, a few minutes from the shrine, has served it since 1801 and shows first-timers how it is done; a three-tier set is about ¥900. The nutty grey noodles are milled with the husk, which is why they are darker and coarser than soba further east.

Tottori, and the way in

Further along the coast, the San'in Main Line carries you to Tottori, which keeps a run of sand dunes (sakyū) that spill down to the Sea of Japan. From the station the Loop Kirin Jishi bus reaches them in about twenty minutes for ¥300; entry to the dunes themselves is free. Walk them barefoot in the low morning sun, before the day buses and the ¥1,500 camel rides arrive — the ridge is high enough that the water disappears behind it until you crest, and then the whole Sea of Japan opens at once. Across the road, the Sand Museum builds a new hall of carved-sand sculptures each year for ¥800.

To reach any of this without flying, take the overnight Sunrise Izumo from Tokyo — the last regularly scheduled sleeper train in Japan. It leaves Tokyo Station around 22:00, runs coupled to the Sunrise Seto as far as Okayama where the two halves uncouple in the dark, and sets you down at Izumoshi a little before 10:00. The cheapest berth, the carpeted nobi-nobi space, costs the base fare plus a ¥1,100 sleeper charge; a private single cabin is more. Book the moment reservations open a month ahead, because this one train sells out faster than anything else on the network. If you miss it, the plainer route is a Shinkansen to Okayama and the Yakumo limited express north over the mountains, which is faster but gives you none of the waking-up-by-the-sea.

新幹線が通らないから、時間がゆっくり流れる。