Arakiya

There are a dozen soba shops around Izumo Taisha and Arakiya is the oldest of them, founded in the Tenmei era of the 1780s and run continuously for around 220 years. It sits on a side street behind the shrine rather than on the approach, which is part of why it has kept a local clientele rather than becoming a coach stop.

Izumo soba is milled with the buckwheat husk still on, which makes it darker, coarser and more strongly flavoured than soba elsewhere in Japan, and it is served warigo style — three stacked lacquered discs, with the broth poured onto the top one and then tipped down through the stack. Arakiya stone-mills its own buckwheat, draws its water from the shop's own well, and makes the broth from dried sardines, which gives it a cleaner and less sweet character than most. It is also credited locally as the place where the pairing of soba and zenzai began.

The dining room itself has changed little over the shop's long run — low wooden counters, a handful of tables, and a kitchen visible enough that you can watch the stone mill and the noodle-cutting from your seat on a quiet afternoon. Because Izumo soba is milled with the husk intact, the noodle has a slightly grainy bite and an earthy, almost nutty flavor that first-time visitors sometimes find stronger than the refined white soba served elsewhere in Japan; regulars consider that roughness the entire point, and shops that strip it out to appeal to tourists are generally looked down on locally. Arakiya's position a short walk off the main shrine approach means it draws a mix of Izumo Taisha pilgrims making a deliberate detour and Taisha-cho residents who have eaten here for generations, and on a slow weekday the two groups sometimes end up trading opinions about how much broth to pour at each stage of the warigo stack.