The idea is to mix your own dipping sauce made of dashi (fish sauce) and any or none of the following: a raw egg, spring onions, crushed daikon, a bit of deliciously goopy mountain potato and wasabi. You put one plate’s worth of soba into this mix at a time, and it is served cold, which is very refreshing in the summer, though some shops serve hot soba as well. There are over 40 soba shops in this small town of only 11,000 people. And every soba plate and every dashi container is made of another Izushi specialty – white pottery: Izushi yaki. The pieces are beautiful and you can purchase one to take home yourself.
oka or Yabu train stations, either trip taking less than half an hour to reach Izushi. The buses start running at 6:30am and stop around 8:30pm. As mentioned before, the famous hot springs of Kinosaki are only half an hour away. Izushi is a very popular day trip location for those who are staying in the onsen town enjoying the hot springs at night, and want to see something a little different during the day. But Izushi is not all about castle walls and soba noodles. It has several temples and historical points of interest, including a wooden tower, Shinkoro, which was built in the 1800s as a drum tower. In its heyday, every morning at 8am a drum in the tower was struck to tell people it was time to go work. Nowadays it serves as a clock tower and a beloved symbol of Izushi. There is also an old wooden lantern built into a tree that marked where samurai would disembark on the river. There are temples in the town and in the hills, and an old, preserved playhouse theater with hand-painted advertisements from the 40’s and 50’s still hanging high on the walls. There is history everywhere.
Castle Town Izushi CJ Stearns
the oldest section of Izushi rests), but that castle too was destroyed. Its remains still sit on the top of the mountain.
Travel is a beautiful and exciting experience encountering the new, reimagining the old, and After this time, Izushi was mostly forgotten by the leaving your mark on a distant place or perhaps world. During the Meiji Era, the train tracks were letting it leave its mark on you. But sometimes it built around this once important town. But as many is worth it to let the wanderer’s eye gaze a little say, this was probably a blessing in disguise. Castle closer to where you lay your head. Of all the places town Izushi remains largely untouched by time. It about which I have written for Connect thus far, brims with temples, old samurai houses and lovely none come closer to my heart than a little country gardens. Kyoto it is not, but Izushi is definitely one town in Hyogo, right here in Japan. of the most well preserved Edo period towns in Japan. Tucked into the mountains that roll through Tajima, in the northern part of Hyogo, down to the Sea of In 1979, the castle walls at the base of Mt. Ariko Japan, sits a tiny town many refer to as “the Little were reconstructed. Alongside them climbs a Kyoto of Tajima.” Quiet Izushi-cho is just a small stone staircase with 37 red torii gates running all piece of a larger whole, being one of the six towns the way to the top. This small renewal brought (or that make up the greater Toyoka City. But it was borrowed) a lot of tourists from nearby Kinosaki. once much more than that. Izushi found its bustle again. During the Edo period, Izushi was a bustling thoroughfare, a prosperous castle town that teemed with samurai. The original castle, built by the Yamana family, stood for over 200 years before falling to Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1569. Another was built on the top of Mt. Ariko (at the base of which 58
March 2012
Izushi cannot be named without bringing one very important thing to mind – soba. It is the town’s specialty dish, or should I say, dishes. Izushi sara soba (or plate buckwheat noodles) is served in five small servings (or more, but you have to ask) on five small plates, each about the size of a coffee saucer.
Soba is a large part of life in Izushi, and the people here take pride in the tradition. In fact, every year there is a soba-eating contest, during which (usually) men compete to see who can eat the most plates of soba. And since the contest was cancelled last year out of respect for those suffering in the Tohoku region, this year’s contest, which takes place on April 15th, is very much anticipated. If you’re not in the mood for buckwheat, there are many different restaurants in town. A big favorite is the pizzeria Sakai, which has stone fired pizza and real cheese! For a more traditional approach there is the restaurant Freedom, which has many Japanese and Western dishes. There are several ramen and udon shops in town as well. The tradition of soba in Izushi is said to have come with a buckwheat-loving lord down from Amanohashidate, one of the Three Views of Japan, which is only an hour away by car, or a little over an hour away by train from nearby Toyoka. Izushi is in fact very well situated, despite its relative obscurity. Though indeed no trains run through the town, it easily accessible from the big cities of Kyoto, Osaka , Kobe and Himeji. There is a reliable bus service called Zentan that can be taken from ToyMarch 2012
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