Yakumoan

Yakumoan occupies a converted samurai residence on Shiomi Nawate, the street of preserved warrior houses running along the north moat of Matsue Castle. You eat looking at a garden and a carp pond, in a building with the low ceilings and dark timber of the class of house it was, a few doors from the Lafcadio Hearn residence.

The dish it is known for is kamo nanban — Izumo soba in a clear duck broth, which is a departure from the usual cold warigo format and, for a lot of people, the better introduction to the noodle. The broth is light and the duck fat sits on the surface. The shop also serves warigo in the standard stacked lacquer discs, with a tempura version. It opens only for lunch, closes at half past one, and stops when the soba runs out, which means it is one of those places you plan the morning around rather than wander into.

Shiomi Nawate itself is one of the better-preserved samurai streets in the Sanin region, a straight lane of pine trees and earthen walls that once housed mid-ranking retainers of the Matsue domain, and eating at Yakumoan inside a former residence of that same class gives a tangible sense of the district's original scale and quiet — rooms sized for a household rather than a restaurant, gardens designed to be viewed from a seated position rather than walked through. The carp in the pond outside the dining room are descendants of fish kept by generations of residents on this street, and regulars say the koi grow noticeably bolder around feeding times, drifting toward the edge of the pond whenever diners linger at the window. Because the shop's hours are so tightly bound to the morning soba supply, the atmosphere rarely turns hurried the way lunch service can elsewhere — most tables are unoccupied by early afternoon, and the last diners of the day often have the garden view largely to themselves.