The Princess is in Another Castle

I know – I know I need to stop with the old video game jokes. I’ll try. I can’t help it.

As I’m in Japan, I don’t get to celebrate Thanksgiving this year. However, we still got a random Monday off for “Labor Thanksgiving Day.” I can’t tell if this is actually what it is due to the group of really difficult kanji on my calendar for the day. But sure, Labor Thanksgiving… let’s go with that.

Since it was a long weekend, I wanted to try and go somewhere farther away. It would cost a lot to get there and take a couple of hours, so we met up early early in the morning (8:30 is early for college students) and bought day passes for the train, which meant we could get on and off whenever we felt like it. (Note to anyone coming here in the future: If you’re going kind of far away and you know you’ll be on the same train line the whole time, a day pass can save you lots of money and is quite 便利。)

After a long train ride, spent mostly conjuring up Velociraptors and tons of zombies on Scribblenauts, we finally arrived in the town of Himeji. It was still early, so there weren’t many people around.

It was really an artsy town, with modern designed buildings and a lot of sculptures along the main drag.

We were starting to get hungry, so we ran in a grocery store and grabbed some bento to have a picnic. Back on our way, we passed a festival that must have been all about food because of the people over the loudspeaker yelling things like “delicious” over and over. Wait, there’s there she is, the White Heron!

When we got close to the main gate, we decided to take a right and go eat in a little park nearby, where a group of teenagers were practicing their tennis swing on what Cailyn aptly described as a ziggurat. Why they were doing this, I have no idea. After that, a Japanese couple wanted us to take their picture (they’re just as touristy in their country as we are) and we had ours taken in return.

Why can’t I look into the sun without squinting?!? Ah well… You can see the castle and the ziggurat in the background.

We were around one side of the castle, and according to my guidebook map, it looked like there was at least a side entrance nearby. So, we headed on around.

Past this bridge, we saw lots of signs for construction. The side entrance was closed. Well… we’re almost to the back, so there has to be another entrance there, right?

Walking a little further, we found the art museum. It looked like an old European boarding school and had lots of sculptures in the courtyard. Also, the leaves were blowing around from the trees which made the scene very Japanese in its own way.

The castle’s getting a little bigger, so we must be getting closer…

We reached the path running behind the castle, but to no avail. It looked like the only entrance was the one we passed much earlier, before lunch. Nothing left but to finish the long circle around.

Because we did this though, I got to see my first example of 紅葉, the beautiful red maple leaves. It’s much prettier than what I’ve seen at home, and the pictures don’t really do it justice. I must have said “wow” about 1000 times that day between the maple leaves and the castle. I’m sure my friends were ready to kill me. Well, judge for yourself:

I think it’s pretty amazing.

Woohoo! We reached the main gate again!

This was a HUGE gate with HUGE doors. When we walked through them, we looked over and saw a tiny tiny key hanging on one of the knobs. The irony was priceless, even if that was just a random key someone placed there.

Ahh, the castle courtyard, full of families with kids and dogs taking lots of pictures. We took some too.

Well, only one thing left to do! Up, up , up!

…of course, this wasn’t that easy. These castles are known for having extremely windy pathways up to the main building, a great strategy for defense. I tried to remember this while I was climbing 3479823 stairs.

I don’t know if you can see this well, but this next picture, there is a triangle of circle tiles, and in the middle there is a tile with a cross. Another example of Christianity finding its way into medieval Japan. Interesting, I think. (The first was the statue of the Virgin Mary Buddha from when we visited the Toji flea market back in September.)

More castle pictures!

When we reached the inner courtyard, the sky was beautiful.

I took some pictures overlooking the town.

Ok, let’s get my inevitable “I was here” photo done for the day…

Phew… let’s move on.

After climbing the above mentioned number of stair s to get to the castle, we took off our shoes, putting them into provided plastic bags and sliding on the provided slippers (very Japanese, isn’t it?) and climbed 237892 more stairs that were very steep and too narrow in slippers that were too big. Seems like a safety hazard a little bit… I think my guidebook should have said something about this.

Finally (finally!) we reached the top of the castle which was WAY too crowded. I should have expected this. We did fight our way over to the windows though.

In these last two pictures, check out how the buildings and houses go until they just can’t anymore, even halfway up the side of that hill/mountain. There are too many people here. Really.

So, after being jostled on the way back DOWN the above mentioned number of steep, narrow stairs in our ill-fitting slippers, we slowly made our way back out of the castle and to the train station. What a lovely day.

My guidebook named Himeji-jo as the #12 place to visit in Japan. It has to be my favorite so far. I just love castles, and this beat Osaka-jo by 1000 times.

We got back on the train, stopping about halfway home (thanks to our 便利 day train passes!) to check out a cool bridge we saw on the way. It’s actually the longest suspension bridge in the world, and the sunset made it look even cooler.

Why must I always take blurry photos?!? Well, this is a question I will settle another day.