Matsue

Matsue sits on a lake in Shimane Prefecture and has one of Japan's twelve remaining original castle keeps. The city has a strong identity around tea ceremony — it is one of Japan's three great tea towns — and around Lafcadio Hearn, the nineteenth-century writer who settled here and became one of the first Westerners to write seriously about Japan. The visitor numbers are low enough that you can have extended interactions with local people rather than queuing through rope barriers.