One straight line from the great torii to the shrine. Shinmon-dōri runs directly from the outer gate to Izumo Taisha, lined with soba restaurants, souvenir shops and businesses set into renovated timber buildings. It is an approach road, so it is wide, and the shops on either side are built low and scaled to that width rather than crowding into it the way a commercial street would. Most of the renovation has happened within the last decade or so, which means old fabric and recent work sit along the same street without much attempt having been made to reconcile the two. Soba here comes in the stacked lacquer bowls the region prefers, and nobody will explain the order in which to eat them.

The Ichibata railway reaches central Izumo in about twenty minutes; work in tourism and accommodation is available year-round because the shrine does not have a season, though living here still wants a car. At busy times for worship the street fills up considerably and temporarily loses the proportion that makes it worth walking. Come on a weekday morning and the width does its work.

An approach road exists in order to get you somewhere else, and everything about its design admits this. The street was laid out in its present form when the railway arrived, so the scale reflects an age of mass pilgrimage rather than a medieval one. Several buildings stood empty for years before the recent wave of renovation reached them. The shrine has its own calendar and the street follows it without needing to be told. The shops along it are built not to detain you for too long, and that restraint is precisely what makes the walk pleasant rather than exhausting.