Izumo, Shimane

The soba here is dark.

Izumo soba is ground with the husk left on, which is why it comes out so deep in color, stronger in scent and rougher on the tongue than the pale noodles of Tokyo. It is served cold in stacked vermilion bowls, three to a set, a style called warigo, and there is a small ritual to eating it.

Autumn is the season of the new harvest. The buckwheat just gathered is milled and eaten young, the noodles faintly green, the fragrance at its highest before the year settles it down. You pour the broth onto the top bowl, eat, and then tip the leftover broth down into the next bowl rather than waste it—the people of Izumo use it to the last, bowl into bowl into bowl.

All this happens at the gate of Izumo Taisha, the great shrine, and it happens especially in the month the rest of Japan calls the month without gods—because here, by old reckoning, it is the month with gods, when the deities of the whole country gather. You make your prayer, and then you sit down to the new soba. In this place, that is simply the order things come in.

In the tenth month of the lunar calendar, Japan's eight million gods converge on Izumo. The rest of the country calls this month Kannazuki — the month without gods — because they have all left. Izumo calls it Kamiari-zuki: the month when gods are present. The Izumo Taisha shrine hosts a ten-day ceremony during which the gods are said to deliberate on matters of human connection.

Whether or not you believe this, the atmosphere is worth traveling for. The shrine complex is one of Japan's oldest and largest, the main hall rebuilt periodically in the ancient style — enormous, thatched, its height a statement about what was built here before recorded history. In the lunar October, the crowds who come are predominantly Japanese, and they come with a purposefulness that is different from ordinary tourism.

Izumo is associated with en — connection, fate, the relationships that shape a life. The shrine's specialization in this particular domain gives it a different quality than the shrines dedicated to success or protection. People come here with specific questions about their lives, and they leave having offered those questions to something older than the vocabulary available for answering them.