Himeji

Our next stop on the trip is Himeji. This castle is one of the most famous castles in Japan. It's called the white heron because of its structure, and of course color.
We took the bullet train from our home base of Kyoto to Himeji.

The castle used to encompass the entire town of Himeji with walls around the entire city. Only the inner castle remains but it's still very impressive.

As we approached the main gate of the castle grounds, we noticed what we at first thought was a construction area. Turned out they were excavating another section of the castle. Not sure if they are going to expand the castle ground, but it was interesting to see something uncovered that's been hidden for so long.


New Excavation
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There's an adjacent Japanese Garden that we decided to check out before going on the castle grounds. It seems this is a common theme to temples and tourist cites. You can see the top of Himeji castle above the trees in this picture.


Japanese Garden near Himeji Castle
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Japanese Garden near Himeji
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There are small wooden shelters throughout the garden, which was a good place to hang out and rest surrounded by the beautiful gardens. (Don't forget to take off your shoes!)


Taking a Break
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We then headed for the castle. As you walk through the gates, there's a large open park in front of the hill where the castle is built. You turn the corner from the entrance, and immediately you see this impressive castle towering in front of you.


Himeji Castle
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As you walk closer to the castle, there were multiple artists painting the castle, as well as musicians playing traditional Japanese stringed instruments.

After paying our fee to get in, we started on the walking tour. Here's a picture of the castle with some perfectly trimmed landscaping in the foreground.


Himeji Castle from on the Grounds
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We tried to have some Japanese tourist take our picture in the same shot so we could use it on a Christmas card (part of our obsession with getting a good pic for our Christmas cards this year). The guy I asked didn't seem too into it. After the first picture didn't look too good, I asked him to take one more and he kind of grumbled and gave me my camera back. I would think we were being annoying Americans, but I figured the Japanese love to take pictures, thought he would be into it. That will teach me to generalize.

Here's the pic that's not bad, but definitely not Christmas card worthy:


Ok, but not Christmas card worthy picture at Himeji.
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From there we went inside the first section of the castle, which is the wall that surrounds the area. Inside are places where they used to pour fun stuff like hot oil and throw rocks at people who are scaling the walls. Also inside was an example of one of the tower rooms where the honored guests stayed while visiting the castle.


Corner of surrounding castle wall which was used for pouring hot oil and defending with archers.
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Recreation of how a room would look in the castle tower. Note: These are not real people no matter how real they may look. I'm pretty sure the shells were real, though (but not the cat).
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You kind of wind your way up and up as you get closer to the castle with interesting things to see along the way. Great place to visit.


View as we get closer to the castle (looks like the castle is getting smaller?)
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Making our way up the winding stairs to the castle.
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Closer yet...
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The Christian influence of late feudal Japan is shown subtly in this picture. The tiles that cover the roofs have the seal of whatever lord was ruling at the time of construction. This particular building had a Christian Cross just below the middle prominent seal.


Lord's Seals and Cross
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As we made our way closer to the main part of the castle, we visited a store house that used to hold salt and rice. I thought it was interesting that you can still see the salt residue from so many hundreds of years ago. You can see it easily in this picture. They've cleaned off the lower part of the storehouse to show the difference:


Storehouse showing salt residue.
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We suddenly turned a corner to see the main castle. It was a very impressive sight. There was a courtyard at the base of the castle which used to be full of wooden structures as a small town was present.


Main Castle
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It was great going to these sights during the week. The only groups we had to fight were the school kids, and we were bigger than them, so it wasn't too bad.

We went inside the castle, and all along the walls were these metal spikes which turned out to be used for hanging weapons and gunpowder (cool).


Weapons racks inside Himeji Castle.
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We climbed up to the top of the castle and had a great view from the very peak. The first shot is the main street all the way back to the train station (short trip to the castle from there). I made a panoramic picture with my camera, as soon as I figure out how to piece it together, it should be pretty cool.


View from the top of Himeji Castle, train station is at the end of the center street.
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Nice view of the hills near Himeji
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We headed back down from the castle, and I took a picture of what it would look like if you were trying to scale the castle walls just before they poured hot oil on you or shot you full of arrows. Not a good place to be:


Looking up Himeji Castle's skirt
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Also on our way down, we saw a good example of what they did when they were running out of stone for the castle's walls. They would use any stone available such as this stone coffin that they took from some poor dead guy to patch up a hole in the wall.


coffin in the castle wall
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Another interesting site is Okiku's well: (this is an excerpt from a random website I came across trying to recall the story)

"It is sight of a famous ghost story known as Nanshu Sara-Yashiki, about a servant known as Okiku who overheard the chief retainer's plot to kill the lord and usurp his castle. Okiku saved the lord by telling her lover, who was loyal to the lord and the plot was foiled. The retainer got revenge by stealing one of ten important dishes belonging to the lord, who blamed it on Okiku and had her executed by throwing her in the well. It was said that you can still hear her counting the dishes but she always stops at nine, and that screams came from the well until her former master was driven insane. To read about this, and other Japanese ghost stories, visit: http://www.i5ive.com/article.cfm/4817/29027"

scarrrrrry.


Okiku's Well

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We had a great time at Himeji, was really worth the visit.

That night, we took the bullet train back to Kyoto because we wanted to take the evening walking tour of the "Floating World", or the world of the geisha. This is back at the Gion area of Kyoto. Our Lonely Planet guidebook had a map of a great walking tour.

I wasn't able to take many pictures because it was nighttime, but we had a great time walking along the narrow streets peeking into windows of tea houses where geisha were entertaining. We saw across a stream a tea house with the Geisha's back to us, and about 6 men around the sides of a table taking part in a tea ceremony.

Also along the tour were areas where the local kids hang out along the river, and some interesting looking clubs further from the river.

It's really an interesting place with the juxtaposition of old world tea houses and new world dance clubs. Here are a couple of pictures from the walk:


Railing and lights along a path. To the left across a small stream is where we saw the geisha performing a tea ceremony in a tea house.
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Pontocho-Dorii at night
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Path to a dimly lit teahouse. This is down a side "alley" along Pontocho-Dorii
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Looks like a fun nightclub. Maybe next time.
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That was a fun day in Japan, we covered a lot of sights. After our walk through the "Floating World" we decided to head back to our hostel and get a good night's sleep...

But first, I just had to head into the 6 story Namco "Game Tower". Ann was nice to oblige. This was off a busy street in the Gion area which is more modern. The first couple of floors were dedicated to "Skill Cranes", which no one was using. After that you had some "Medallion" games, which looked similar to pachinko where you watch little balls cascade down your game machine and hope they end up in the right spot.

The top couple of floors had some great video games, and lots of multiplayer internet games where players would use playing cards to interact with the action on the screen as they play with players from other arcades. We say a kid using soccer trading cards manipulating them so the players on the screen corresponded to the players on his cards.

I just stuck to the traditional games and kept it short since it was a long day.


Steve in Namco Game Tower in Kyoto. Note the zombie-like attention at which he's concentrating on the game.
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Next we head to Mt. Koya, which is a mountain town south of Kyoto where Shingon Buddism got its start. We stay at a monastery and walk through a mile long ancient graveyard at night...

Hiroshima

Our next outing from Kyoto would be to Hiroshima. It's about a 2 hour train ride from Kyoto, so we got to experience the bullet train once again. It's nice to hop on the bullet train early in the morning, take a nap, and wake up at the next place to visit.

We arrived in Hiroshima station, and looked for a place to eat. I was amazed to see Ann steer towards a McDonald's. She won't go near the place at home, and I haven't been to one for a long time as well. I think we were just missing the familiar taste of greasy, unhealthy, fast food from home. We guiltily ate our lunch quickly, and headed for the Peace Park where the hypo-center of the A-Bomb was centered.


Ann's choice for lunch
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They have a cable car system that reminded me of New Orleans. We performed our standard "look confused and someone will feel sorry for you and give you directions" thing, and someone did just that. We just had to take the number 2 train until we heard them say "Peace Park" in English. A gentleman that looked to be a tourist helped us out, it turns out he used to live in Hiroshima for many years, and now is coming back for a vacation.

Throughout our visit to Hiroshima, I felt a strange mix of guilt for what our country did to these innocent people, and a feeling of relief that they don't hate all Americans because of it. Everyone was so friendly and helpful, just like anywhere else in Japan.

We arrived at the peace park on a hot morning, and decided to make our way into the museum. The museum was packed full of kids on field trips, which is par for the course everywhere we went. Many times, they would walk by and say "Hello" and be amazed when we said hello back (or even more amazed when we said Ohayo or Konnichi-wa (good morning/good day)).


School kids at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum
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The exhibit was very interesting, and emotional as they showed the effects of the radiation, at the time a mystery as to why people were getting sick. They had the steps where a shadow of a person was projected from the intense heat which vaporized the person sitting in the spot. This is something I remembered seeing a picture of when I was a kid, and to see it in reality was a shock.

After the Museum, we toured the grounds of the peace park. They have a memorial which has a flame that burns until the last nuclear weapon has been destroyed on Earth. At this point, the flame will be extinguished.


Cenotaph at Peace Memorial Park
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Flame that will be extinguished after all nuclear weapons are destroyed.
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At the cenotaph, there was a line of elderly people in wheel chairs that were brought up to the memorial one by one. They looked as if they could be around the age of WWII vets or survivors.

We noticed when walking around the grounds that there were about 15 people all working on one hedge. It seems that they have many people for one job, as Mike and Alicia pointed out back in Tokyo. The other thing that was interesting, was there were elderly people that looked in better shape than us working along with the young people in the blistering heat of midday trimming and taking care of the grounds.

We moved on to the Children's Memorial which is dedicated to Sadako, a young girl who was diagnosed with Leukemia 10 years after the blast. She started folding origami cranes, believing that if she created 1000 cranes, she would recover from her illness. She wasn't able to finish the cranes, but since her death thousands of school kids from throughout the world started sending paper cranes to Hiroshima. They've been collected and strung into an impressive display.


Collection of cranes from school kids
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Children's Memorial crane collection
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Children's memorial monument
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We were walking away from the children's memorial, when a woman approached us and said he wanted to say a Buddhist prayer for us. She told us to close our eyes, so we did while she silently prayed for us. It was quite a long time she prayed, and I was guiltily trying to feel my back pocket for any sign of her trying to take my wallet. We realized after walking away that we think we were supposed to give her money, but she wasn't so bold as to ask us. Maybe she was just saying a prayer for us, I like to think so.

After our blessing was performed, we stopped a while to look at the A-Bomb dome. This is a building that was near the hypo-center of the blast. The dome is in the state it was when the blast hit, just a skeleton which reminds visitors of the damage that was done.


A-Bomb Dome
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A-Bomb dome memorials
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As we were crossing a bridge to see the A-bomb dome a bit closer, we realized we were crossing the T-shaped bridge that the American pilot used as a target. The hypo-center was about 50 yards from this bridge. It was eerie to be at that point where one of our pilots sighted in his scope years ago.

Our map told us there was a castle in Hiroshima. This is a reproduction, of course. We weren't too impressed with the castle itself, but I decided to pay a few hundred yen to take a look inside. Ann decided to take a break on a bench near the castle. There were (as it seems there are everywhere in Japan) some vending machines with drinks and ice cream nearby. Good place for a break.


Hiroshima Castle gate
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Hiroshima Castle
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There was a museum inside, which was interesting, but the best part was their exhibit of samurai swords. They were all made in the samurai era, they must have had 20 of them on display. They were only the blades themselves, with etchings by the artist. It was really cool to see, I'm glad I stopped in!

I was also able to try on a replica of a samurai helmet. Where's Ann when you need her! I did manage to get a picture of this from the handy mirror they had on hand.


Self Portrait
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As we were leaving the castle area, we noticed some trees with signs near them. These trees were existing during the bombing, and have been propped up with bamboo ever since to serve as another reminder. The trees are narled, and strange looking from the blast.

We took the Shinkansen back to Kyoto for the night, and ate dinner at the Second House restaurant near our hostel. They specialize in the ever popular spaghetti and cake combo. I have to say, the spaghetti was not bad, and the cake really made the meal.


Spaghetti and Cake?
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Next stop, Himeji castle (cool)...