Finding Unexpected Gems in Matsumoto

After walking the Nakasendo and staying in Tsumago, we made our way to the city of Matsumoto. It felt small and almost sleepy compared with Tokyo and Kyoto, but we could still tell that there were some Golden Week crowds around the more touristy areas. Most of the tourists we saw here were Japanese, though, so we felt like we were slightly off the beaten path.

The most striking features about Matsumoto are the mountains and castle. As we approached by train, we started to see snow capped mountains from the distance, and from many places in the city they were in view. The Matsumoto Castle is one of Japan’s historic castles and dates back to the 1500s; it doesn’t look quite as imposing as the Osaka Castle, but has been carefully restored and preserved to give an interesting look at how Japanese castles were designed. After visiting the outside of the castle for a couple of times and balking at the long line, we figured out that we could get a ticket in advance for a later time in the day, and did that.

While we waited for our castle time, we headed to the Ukiyo-e (woodblock print) museum on the outskirts of town. The current exhibit primarily featured prints of geisha and their kimonos, and the descriptions by each print gave us really interesting details about the meaning of certain elements and fabric patterns. We wished the museum had more exhibit space for their very large collection (they didn’t have any prints of more natural scenes on display), but they did have a great museum shop with reproductions, where we got to see a wider range of prints and pick a couple to take home as souvenirs.

After visiting the museum, we experienced one of the top highlights of our trip! On our last night in Kyoto, we had tried a sake flight with dinner and found one we really liked from Matsumoto. We had looked it up and found that they were open for visitors, though it wasn’t clear how officially (we also realized later that it wasn’t in fact the same brewery that produced the sake we had tried). The brewery was pretty close to the Ukiyo-e museum, so we walked there through some quiet residential streets, feeling like we were very much off the beaten path, and a little unsure what we were going to find.

We came to the driveway of the brewery and found a deserted yard surrounded by buildings, not looking particularly like they were expecting visitors. As we tentatively walked towards the buildings, two women appeared and greeted us. It turned out that one of them spoke English and was the 6th generation owner of the brewery. She offered to give us a tour, which included a walk through the 200-year-old family house and commentary about how the sake was made, how the business had historically been run, what different rooms and furniture pieces were for, and what Japanese family life was like. We had accidentally stumbled upon an amazing private tour of many aspects of Japanese history and culture!

After the tour, we got to visit the sake store to taste. There was a serve yourself section where we were encouraged to try all their main range of sakes, and then we decided to do their more premium tasting as well. Our tour guide talked us through everything we were trying and told us more about the sake production process. We got to keep our sake glasses as a souvenir and bought a few bottles to bring home as well :) When we were ready to leave, our guide walked us halfway to the train station to make sure we found it and gave us detailed instructions about which direction was back to Matsumoto and how we’d pay for our tickets.

Another highlight of our whole trip was a sushi restaurant we found for dinner one night in Matsumoto. It was a small restaurant with primarily bar-style seating facing the sushi prep station where the husband and wife owners of the restaurant made each of our dishes for us (it was a set-course meal, and we ate A LOT). Their two daughters were also working at the restaurant, one of whom spoke English and chatted with us throughout the meal about national parks in Japan and the US. The food was amazing and the people watching was fascinating; it was a great meal!