Old Matsue

As students at St Hearn's hurriedly scribbled their last assignments and readied themselves for some serious swotting for finals, I savoured my last month in Japan living at the house of friends in the charming older quarter of Matsue, Okudani-cho. The local streets were narrow and lined with shambling old wooden buildings, windows gated with wooden bars like insect cages, and some buildings were hung with ornately written kanji signs advertising various businesses, from soy sauce to sake, and kimonos to tailoring.

Precarious during peak hour, the narrow alleyways were abundant with anarchic school students riding along the wrong side of the road, messaging on their keitais and going like the clappers, completely oblivious to wandering ojiichans, little kiddies and the likes of law-abiding citizens such as Miss Ember. Things became more complicated when Strawberry Cones delivery boys on scooters or an omnibus were thrown into the mix. The omnibus in particular would hoon down the narrow streets, scattering gossiping elderfolk, vegetable sellers and snoozing cats in its wake. When crossing the road, most Japanese wait for the green man to doff his 30s gangster hat before walking forth onto the tarmac, but when it comes to riding bicycles or driving any kind of vehicle in a confined space, the traffic is as heart attack-inspiring as an autorickshaw joyride through New Delhi.

Red post boxes are most cheerful.

Despite these palpitations, I was delighted to cycle about the town. Nearby, temples and shrines were tucked away in the back lanes behind houses; a sultry tang of something like banana emanated from the open doors of the soy sauce factory; cats dosed in the street and kitsch flowerpots bloomed around doorways. The soy sauce factory was painted a cheerful red, and I liked to admire the ceramic pots on the windowledges which bore the crisp blue kanji of 森 (mori; forest), the owners' name.



Around the corner was the samurai district and the castle, perched above a forest that vibrated with the percussion of cicadas and, in the evenings, echoed with the alarming lowing of the bullfrog. From here I would cycle to Kyomise, a charming area of Taishoroman style, coasting through the mix of European-style buildings and Japanese wooden ryokans and other places of entertainment, to the elegant bridges aglow with flickering faux-lantern light, and along the rivers lined with weeping willows and the warm buttery light of old-fashioned yellow street lamps that budded between the foliage.

A random canal in Okudani-cho.