Izumo

An overnight trip on the Sunrise Izumo, Japan’s awesome Tokyo-Shimane sleeper train【Photos】

Mr. (and Mrs.) Sato ride the overnight rails back to his hometown on one of Japan’s coolest cross-country travel options.

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We visit a Brazilian buffet in Shimane Prefecture, eat so much beef and sausage we forget dessert

The food was delicious, even though we didn’t get to try Brazil’s most famous dish. 

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Japan’s new eight-headed dragon license plates might be the coolest in the entire world【Pics】

The Yamata no Orochi is ready to leap out of the annals of mythology and onto your car.

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Izumo’s Starbucks, a stone’s throw away from the gathering place of Shinto’s eight million gods

Shintoism has such a large pantheon of gods that the religion even has a structured way in which they all keep in touch with each other. Every October, the deities enshrined across the nation are said to gather in Shimane Prefecture’s Izumo Taisha Shrine, where they convene for their annual divine meeting.

We imagine it’s a busy conference, considering that some eight million deities are thought to attend. So we’re sure several of them were happy to find Izumo City now has a Starbucks, with the same tasty beverages the chain serves all over Japan, but with Japanese décor that’s unique to Izumo.

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