Matsue Castle

Only twelve castles in Japan still have their original keep, the wooden structure that was actually built for the warlord rather than poured in concrete in the 1960s. Matsue is one of them, finished in 1611 by Horio Yoshiharu, and since 2015 it has been a National Treasure. The upgrade came late because the documents proving the completion date were only found in 2012, on two wooden prayer boards stored in a nearby shrine.

It is a black castle. The upper walls are clad in dark weatherboarding rather than white plaster, which makes it look heavier and older than it is, and the local nickname is the plover castle for the shape of the gables. Inside, the stairs are original: steep, narrow, polished by four hundred years of feet, and there is a well in the basement, the only keep in Japan to have one. The top floor is an open watch room with the lake on one side and the town on the other.

Do the Horikawa boat tour. Small covered boats run a fifty-minute circuit of the moat, and at several bridges the roof has to be lowered hydraulically so everyone ducks. In winter there is a kotatsu heater under the seats. It is the best thing in Matsue and most visitors miss it.

On the north side, Shiomi Nawate keeps a row of samurai residences behind earthen walls, one of them the house Lafcadio Hearn lived in, with a museum next door. His writing is why the outside world knew anything about Meiji Japan's ghost stories.

Castle entry is around 680 yen. Sunset over Lake Shinji, ten minutes west, is the other reason to stay the night.