Yaegaki Shrine

**Bring the right coin.** The divination uses a ten-yen or hundred-yen coin placed on the paper. Anything heavier sinks the sheet immediately and anything lighter will not sink it at all. If you have no coins, the shrine office sells the paper but not the coin. **Buy the paper before you walk back.** The pond is in the wood behind the main hall, several minutes from the office. Working out that you need to buy something once you are standing at the water is the standard mistake. **Go early for the pond.** The wood is small and gets congested from mid-morning onward, particularly in October when the whole prefecture fills with people making the Izumo shrine circuit. Before 10:00 AM you may have it to yourself. **Look at the painted panels.** The shrine holds ninth-century painted wooden panels of the deities, among the oldest shrine paintings in Japan, displayed in the treasure hall. Most visitors walk past them on the way to the pond. **Chain it with Kamosu and Kumano.** All three are part of the Ou Rokusha group in the hills south of Matsue and are a short drive apart. Yaegaki is the busy one; the other two are near-empty.