Japan - Part Five: Himeji

Our last morning in Japan, we said goodbye to our hosts in Shimotaki and headed to the cute, and much larger, touristy town of Himeji. 

Our hosts in Shimotaki

Willow making faces at the fish outside the seafood restaurant.

We stopped to watch a man with his trained monkey do circus tricks.  He could jump over bars rolling into a somersault on the other side.  Then he walked on stilts.  It was sad to see the monkey on a leash.

The main street coming out of the Himeji train station leads straight to Himeji Castle.  The street is wide with almost wider sidewalks for all the tourists walking.  But the castle is very impressive.  It felt a bit like walking towards Cinderella's castle down Main Street of Disney World.

The moat around it is quite impressive and one must cross this bridge to get inside.

On the opposite side of the bridge are guards dressed as samurais.  We later found out that this is itself a tourist experience.  The 'guards' are tourists who pay for the privilege to be 'samurais' for the day and get their picture taken with all the other tourists coming through.  Who do you think had more fun?

After passing through the front gate, you come out onto a large open square.  We took many a silly photo from this vantage point.

As we neared it, we noticed that the loopholes in the walls (sama) were of different geometric shapes: triangle, square and circle.  I'd never seen that done before.  The brochure said that those 3 shapes were for shooting guns and there was a fourth oblong shape for using bows.  The openings were at different heights, some for standing shooters, some for kneeling, and some for a prone position. 

The landscaping was beautiful surrounding the castle, with the cherry blossoms just starting to bloom.

As we followed the marked paths up to the castle itself, the path made very sharp turns and got narrower and narrower.  At some points, we had to walk through small doors in a wall, small enough we had to duck and go in one at a time.  The path was steep in some places too; you could see how it was a defensive tactic to force the attacking army to maneuver up and into these tight spaces where the defenders could fire arrows down on them or throw stones from the stone drops on the upper floors. 

When we reached the actual entrance to the castle itself, they made us take off our shoes and put them in a used plastic bag to carry them around with us throughout the tour.  We did the rest of our tour in our socks.  That was unexpected and on the higher floors where the windows were open, our toes got cold!  It wasn't that warm of a day.
The original castle was built in 1346 at the site of a fort that had been constructed in 1333.  The 3-story keep was built in 1581, and the 7-story keep we entered was built from 1601-1609.  The architectural features we saw inside were really cool.

Six-petal decorative covers to conceal nail heads (Rokuyo-kugi-kakushi)

Double doors have an inner door and an outer door

A gable room (hafu-no-ma)

Weapon racks

The view from the 6th floor was pretty awesome.  To be able to see the layout of the whole castle grounds and surrounding areas.

view of the Ni-no-mon Gate (skinny path going into it) and the Kesho-yagura Tower (further out along the wall)

view of the Sangoku-bori Moat and the West Bailey behind it.

The Shachihoko fish protected the castle from fire (or so the superstition goes)

View of the San-no-maru Hiroba (Square) and the main street Otemae-dori leading straight to the train station

View of the eastern side of the moat, with the Himeji City Zoo straddling it

The descent was much faster than the ascent, although the stairs were just as steep and sketchy.  The outside of the castle walls, looking up at the eaves is one of my favorite parts.  And the castle walls were built with a fan curve making it steeper as it goes up and thus more difficult to climb.

On the corner of the building you can see the stone drop openings.

 The fish that sits on all the roof corners is called the Shachihoko and it evolved throughout the different eras. 

 We made our way out of the castle grounds and around to the Koko-en Garden.  Of course we had to stop for more silly photos and we saw some tourists getting a boat tour of the moat.

 Koko-en garden was constructed on the site of the Nishi-Oyashiki (Lord's West Residence).
It was made using gardening techniques from the Edo period (1600-1860). 

Maya and Charlie took the camera and the phone and were obsessed with getting shots of the koi fish and closeups of flowers.

Charlie also attempted to master the art of the selfie.

We left the gardens and then had lunch at an Italian place called Padre Madre.  Tasty food.  We had some time to kill at the train station, so we took more goofy photos.  We also found a diorama of Himeji Castle.

Up on the train platform, there are no safety barriers between you and the ridiculously fast Shinkansen bullet train.  We also didn't realize that the train doesn't always stop.  We were sitting there waiting when one whizzed by us so fast it was shocking.

We took our train back to Shin-Osaka, and then a slower train around to Kansai Airport to fly home.
At the airport we found yet more flavors of Kit Kats! Who doesn't want to try cantaloupe flavored Kit Kats?

We thought our trip was over, but just as we almost landed at Incheon, the pilot started ascending again and said visibility was too bad to land.  He rerouted to Gimpo airport, which isn't far away, but delayed us and got me really worried we wouldn't get back before midnight.  I had always heard that subways and buses stop running at midnight.  I really thought that at midnight the subway would just stop and we would have to get off and find our own way home from wherever that might be.  I could not understand why there were still so many people on the subway at 11:59pm.

But, as it turns out, they don't just stop wherever they are at midnight and force you to get off.  Thankfully, they go to the end of their line and then stop.  We made it to our "home" station around 12:30am.  Then, we finally discovered what caused the low visibility making the plane reroute.  It was a very dense fog.  We had to drag our suitcases through that fog, across Central Park, at 12:30am.  It made me very grateful that we live in such a safe place that walking through a large public park at night with low visibility isn't dangerous at all.  We were all snug in our beds by 12:45am.